Adventures in Hoenn Act 1: Deoxys and the Regis
by stallmaster
Summary: The adventures of Brendan and May after the events of Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald. A mysterious alien is discovered by our heroes. Before figuring out what it is that he wants, they're shocked to discover that the Regis have been awakened. Mild action violence
1. Prologue: Modest Beginnings

Adventures in Hoenn

Act 1: Deoxys and the Awakening of the Three Regis

Prologue

The Hoenn region is a grand, beautiful island filled with all sorts of wonderful and fascinating Pokémon. With a vast array of locations, ranging from a sandy desert, to a humid rainforest, to an active volcano, Hoenn's hot and tropical climate attracts all sorts of different Pokémon, and with those Pokémon comes fun, adventure, and friendship.

About one year ago, the island was threatened by an environmental disaster caused by two terrorist groups: Team Magma and Team Aqua. The plans of these two groups were simple: to awaken the legendary Pokémon of the land, and reshape it for a better future, at least in their eyes. Team Magma planned to awaken Groudon, the Continent Pokémon, to expand the landmass; and Team Aqua wanted to awaken Kyogre, the Ocean Pokémon, to broaden the sea's horizon. Neither of their plans worked however, as they were thwarted by two young Pokémon trainers by the names of Brendan and May, and the arrival of a certain legendary Pokémon...

Today, the Hoenn region is safe from harm, and the young heroes are at peace, living in Littleroot town, and continuing their training to both become the greatest trainers on the island. During their training, they've visited a few other lands, and even managed to acquire some new pokémon. Things couldn't really be better for them at the moment.

* * *

"Charizard, Flamethrower!" cried Brendan, with a strong voice, filled with determination. His eyes were giant brown orbs fixated on the battle at hand. His large white hat covered his brown hair, and his ensemble was distinctive of that of a Pokémon trainer. A large green and white bag on his back, brown shorts, and a belt that had several kinds of poké balls on it. His bent posture and clenched fists revealed a type of offensive strategy in his combat.

The eager Pokémon roared as it swung its head back and thrust it forward, spewing a spiral of flames to its opponent.

"Hurry, Hitmontop! Dodge it!" responded May, the trainer he was playing against. She had a certain cunningness about her that made her strategies to be pretty defensive. Her brown hair swung in her face as she cried out her orders, and her ensemble was also a definitive trainer outfit. A red skirt with a large belt that also acted as a bag around her waist. She also had a red bandana around her light brown hair.

Heading its trainers orders, Hitmontop quickly put its hands on the ground and spun itself round and round. He managed to move over to the side, avoiding Charizard's Flamethrower.

"Now, use Hi Jump Kick, Hitmontop!"

Hitmontop careened all the way to the other side of the arena as Charizard tried unsuccessfully to hit it with its Flamethrower. Making his way up to fire dragon, Hitmontop then put his hands on the ground to brake and pushed himself up into the air. Soon after, he gave a hard kick in Charizard's face and landed in the back of him.

Charizard quickly recovered, and managed to whack the fighting-type with the tip of his tail, who flew a few feet away, and recovered on his head. He was breathing harder and had a black mark on his back; Hitmontop was burned.

"Finish it off with Fly, Charizard!" cried Brendan.

May knew she had to act fast, or she'd lose the battle there. So she clenched her teeth and said the only thing she could:

"Dodge it, Hitmontop! Just do your best to dodge it!"

With a few flaps of its wings, Charizard was already several feet in the air, and soon after it swooped down towards the burned Pokémon. Hitmontop did what he was told, and spun to the left, effectively dodging the fly. However, Charizard simply turned left as well and kept pursuing him. Hitmontop spun as fast as he could, but Charizard was catching up with him, so he put one hand on the ground, and spun around 180 degrees abruptly, passing right underneath the fire dragon, who hit the ground and dragged a few feet further.

"Rapid Spin!" cried May.

And she was right, for soon after his tumble, Charizard quickly lifted his head, turned it, and shot out a flamethrower, knowing full well that Hitmontop was right behind him. The rapid spin worked, and deflected all of the fire. He then quickly spun his way towards Charizard, who was trying to get himself back up, leapt up in the air, and dropped down with his foot on Charizard's back.

"Alright Charizard," cried Brendan, thinking he had an advantage to the battle. "now Seismic Toss him!"

This was easier said than done, for Hitmontop had tightly clinged to Charizard's back, and the poor Pokémon turned around in circles and was waving his arms trying to get him off.

"Mach punch him now, Hitmontop!" ordered May.

The burned Hitmontop started pummelling Charizard's back, doing little yet gradual damage. Having had enough of it, Charizard eventually threw himself on the ground, hoping to crush the pesky fighter. Hitmontop, however, managed to jump off a few seconds before, and began to spin a away from him. He also managed to hop over Charizard's tail as the fire dragon had tried to whip him with it.

"Great job, Hitmontop! I just hope you can keep this up though..." May muttered under her breath.

"Charizard, finish it off with a Gust!" screamed Brendan.

There was little May could do aside from ordering a quick evasion which, unfortunately for her, didn't work out. Hitmontop was blown away by the gust and fell on his back, unable to battle anymore. Brendan jumped up in euphoria.

"Yes!" he cried. "You're finished, May!"

"Don't hold your breath." replied May, "I've still got two Pokémon left, one of which is Blast-"

"Alright! Everybody out!" cried out a voice from afar. Both May and Brendan groaned in disappointment as they saw Norman running toward them, waving his arms. "The cleaner's here, we have to clear the gym."

"But I'm just about to win, Norman." said Brendan, in a disappointed tone.

"You have one Pokémon left, and you [i]still[/i] think that you'd have won?" said May. "Boy, you're stubborn."

"Sorry kids," said Norman, May's father. He was the Petalburg city gym leader and the father of one of the Hoenn region's champions. His entire demeanour was rather… plain. He was dressed in a dark grey jacket and light grey pants (they weren't sweat pants), and his hair was of a darkish hue. Nothing particularly striking could be noticed, he just looked like an ordinary guy.

"I've already delayed this far enough, and I really need the gym to be cleaned. challengers have been frequent lately and they've been scuffing up my floor. I have to keep things neat for them."

"It's alright Dad," said May. "we understand. We'll start another battle some other time."

"Thanks May." he said to her, before remembering to ask Brendan: "Say, would you need a ride home today, Brendan? I have to get out of the gym anyway."

"No thanks Norman," replied Brendan "my father's coming to pick me up."

"Oh, alright then. Any new discoveries that the professor made recently?" he said this as he and the children began walking towards the door of the gym.

"Nothing that can be called discoveries really, though he spends all of his nights gazing at the sky these days. He can't really study it during the day, so it drives me and my mother nuts when we want to sleep."

Norman chuckled. "Why is he fixated at the skies? Does he expect to find a comet to name?"

"He's been seeing some odd shooting stars through his telescope. One of them came really close apparently, and he says that it had a very strange formation."

"Was it a comet, maybe?"

"He's not sure. He's contacted the Mossdeep Research Center, but they haven't called back yet."

"Hmm," Uttered May. "sounds like Professor Birch is the only one lucky enough to have seen it."

"Yeah, it makes me and my mother wonder if he hadn't been imagining it, or something."

"Sounds vaguely familiar, eh, Brendan?" joked Norman.

"Hey, I'm telling you, I really did see Latios. He swooped right above me!"

"I'm joking." Norman said, as he chuckled. "It's not impossible that you may have seen it."

"Although it _is_ highly unlikely." said May.

The trio finally came to the door and left the gym. Outside, waiting for them in his car, was none other than Professor Birch, the Pokémon Professor, waiting for Brendan to come out.

"Come on, Brendan!" he cried out from the driver's seat. "Dinner's almost ready and we don't want to be late."

"Coming, Dad!" replied Brendan. He turned toward Norman and May to say his farewells.

"So long, Norman! Bye May, I'll battle you soon!"

"Don't forget, we're going Wailmer watching at Lilycove City tomorrow!"

"I'll be there!" replied Brendan, as he made his way into the passenger's side of the vehicle.

Professor Birch made a wide u-turn and was on his way back to Littleroot town as he and his son waved to their friends. As soon as they got to a far enough distance, the professor started speaking to Brendan:

"Oh, uh… by the way son, you can't go Wailmer watching tomorrow."

"What?" Brendan asked, stupefied. "Well, why didn't you just tell me then?"

"I'm sorry, but I didn't want them to find out what I was doing. I've been very busy with my studies lately, and I don't want to appear as some sort of nutcase in front of them."

"Yeah, well, it's a little late for that…" he muttered, his head turned toward the window.

"What was that?"

"Why is it exactly that I can't go to Lilycove tomorrow?" Brendan replied, changing the subject.

"Well, as you know, you're mother and I have been doing a few studies concerning Hoenn's skies and we keep noticing a strange comet that keeps zooming in incredibly close to the planet."

"Yeah, you only talk about it every day, what of it?"

"Well, the Mossdeep Research Facility apparently thinks it's too good to return my calls, so we're going over there tomorrow to tell them personally. I can't let this discovery go unnoticed, what if it lands and we're not aware of it!"

"Why do you need me to come?"

"You're my son. I need you there for support. Wouldn't you like to re-visit the Space Center, anyway? It's been a while since you've been there."

"I guess…" he said hesitantly, peering out into the distance. Brendan was never fond of the Research Center, as he always found their scientists to be snooty and elitist, but he respected his father enough to help him through this. Maybe they would pay attention to what his father had to say this time around. "How are you getting there?"

"Your mother and I are going to drive all the way to Lilycove, and from there we're going to ride to Mossdeep city on her Lapras. You could simply fly there on Charizard."

"Alright then." Brendan finally decided. "I'll go with you."

"Thank you, Brendan; you don't know how much this means to me and your mother."

"It's alright Dad, I just hope I'll have enough time to go Wailmer watching later during the day."

"That's the spirit. Always be positive."

Finally, the two arrived at their destination, and Professor Birch parked his car in the driveway of their home. It was evening, and the sun was still out and was just about to set westward. The father and son entered their home, had supper with Ms. Birch, and relaxed for the rest of the evening. As usual, the professor stayed up until the late hours of the night looking out into the sky and writing down calculations, in preparation for the next day, while the others slept soundly.

* * *

Brendan woke up the next day by the sounds of his parents getting ready for their trip. They were in the next room, packing all of the papers and charts that they conducted their studies on. He got up from his bed, and went over to see them. He was still in his pyjamas while they were all dressed up and ready to go.

"W-What time is it?" he asked, still somewhat disoriented from getting up.

"It's 9:10" his mother replied. "We're just about ready to leave."

"What?" he asked, incredulously. "But I just got up. Why didn't you wake me up sooner?"

"I'm sorry, Brendan, but we had a lot of work to do before leaving." his father replied, although not looking at him directly. He didn't seem that apologetic, but that was because he was quite busy at the moment. "Besides, we're taking two modes of transportation to get there, you still have plenty of time to get ready, eat and fly there."

"All right…" Brendan answered. "I just wished you would've woken me up or something."

"Sorry again, Brendan, but look at the bright side, it's not like we won't see each other today."

"Yeah, yeah…" the boy said, brushing them off and heading back to his room to get ready.

After he had brushed his teeth and headed back town, he saw his parents coming back inside the house. They had just finished putting their stuff in the car and were about to bid farewell to Brendan.

"Goodbye, dear" his mother said, planting a soft kiss on his forehead. He cringed as she did so and pleaded that she not repeat it again.

" So long Brendan." his father said. "See you in about a half an hour. Thanks again."

The two of them proceeded out the door before Brendan could even respond:

"…You're welcome."

He was now alone in the house. He stood in place for a moment, preparing himself mentally for how his day might turn out, expecting the worst but hoping for the best. The house seemed eerily quiet without anyone inside, and although he had already been in the house alone, this time he felt somewhat depressed. After a while he regained his senses and prepared to eat. Today was going to be a long day, so he had to pack it in as much as he could before leaving.


	2. Chapter 1: Regirock Appears

Chapter 1

Regirock Appears

It was a beautiful day in Littleroot town. The sun was in the process of rising at the east of the horizon, and several little clouds dotted the sky, like white blotches on a light blue canvas. The town itself was somewhat sleepy, few people were out and about and the streets were very quiet, but for the few people that were outside, they were plentifully enjoying the day: children playing with each other or with their parents; Couples out for a walk; trainers getting out of their houses and walking with their pokémon out of town and into adventure. Everyone had something to do today, and Brendan was no exception.

After having eaten, the teenager quickly went back upstairs to get ready. He grabbed his poké ball belt and strapped it on himself, put on his signature white hat and covered his dark brown locks with it, and he tied his red and white running shoes to his feet. He was all set and ready to go. He had fifteen minutes to get to Mossdeep city, so he figured he could stand to leave early. Upon opening the door, however, he realized that he had forgotten something incredibly important.

"Shoot!" he said to himself, slapping his hand on his forehead. "I forgot to tell May that I can't come today! Ohh… stupidity thy name is Brendan! I hope I'm not too late."

It was 9:15, and Brendan was supposed to meet his friend at her house at 9:20. The trip between Brendan and May's house is about one minute, so he wouldn't be late. He quickly dashed out the door and ran all the way to May's house and when he reached the porch he knocked very quickly on the door. Norman answered, and seemed strangely relieved to find the seventeen-year-old on his front porch.

"Brendan!" he exclaimed. "Am I glad to see you."

"Hey there, Norman." Brendan answered. "I'm glad to see you too. By any chance, is M-"

"I was just about to call you" Norman interrupted. "to tell you that May left early with her mother to do some shopping at the Lilycove department store. She told me to tell you to meet her there at 9:30 anyway."

"Oh, that's good to hear, but I'm afraid I won't be able to stay there."

"Oh, well then you'd better hurry up to Lilycove to tell her that."

"Well, couldn't I just call her?"

"Her Pokénav is broken, unfortunately. It's at Devon Corporation for repairs."

"Hm, that's great." Brendan said, before sighing. "Well, thanks Norman, I'd better go quickly then."

"No problem."

As Brendan trotted down the porch stairs, he tossed out a poké ball and Charizard materialized in front of him. After hopping onto his back, he cried: "To Lilycove!" As the fire lizard started flapping its enormous wings to gain altitude, Brendan waved to Norman, and he was soon off to the coastal city.

* * *

The tropical region of Hoenn was truly a delight viewed from above. Tall trees could be seen as miniscule green flowers, and the vast mountains (particularly the still active Mt. Chimney) were grand sights to behold. The first time the region is viewed from above is quite awe-inspiring. Of course, Brendan had already seen it several times before, and was too concentrated on what he had to do to be able to appreciate all the little details (he noticed from the corner of his eye, the sight of a group of people assembled near the desert on Route 111, but didn't take too much time to consider it, especially after dismissing it as a manifestation of the region's monthly weather parade). After having passed Fortree City, he had his Pokémon swoop down to a lower altitude, in preparation for landing. The sun was hot that day, and Brendan felt its strong rays on his back. Were it not for the refreshing breeze produced by the flight, he would've felt much more exhausted upon arrival.

As the two entered Lilycove, Brendan checked his watch and saw that it was 9:25. He wondered if May was still at the department store, or if she had already gone to the edge of town to wait for him. From where he was, he saw no one at the coast (at least, no one that looked like May) so he landed in front of the department store. After telling Charizard to wait for him outside, he entered and started looking. He had five minutes to find May, tell her what he had to say, and go see his parents.

The store was very large and spacious; the walls were coloured a bright orange while the floor tiles were more of a light blue. Usually, the store was hustling and bustling, but that day was a weekday and so, there weren't a great deal of people.

Brendan always hated department stores as he found them quite boring, so you can imagine that the idea of looking for someone in a very [i]large[/i] department store didn't exactly enthral him. He decided to just have her paged. Unfortunately, before he could reach the front counter, he had something sprayed into his face, a bitter, pungent cloud of gas enveloped his head and seeped into his nostrils. He immediately started coughing and hacking.

"How do you like it, sir?" asked a young, blonde woman holding a small perfume bottle with a picture of a Skitty in her hand. "It's called Skitty Sensation, and all the young girls love it! It's perfect if you can't seem to find a gift for that special someone."

"Thank you but I'll pass." Brendan replied.

"Are you sure? We're having a two for one sale today and today only."

"Quite sure. But thank you, anyway."

As Brendan moved away he rolled his eyes and muttered to himself: "Skitty Sensation… more like Killer Koffing. Heh, I have to remember that one."

At the counter, Brendan asked if he could page his friend, and the attendant at the counter nicely agreed. Of course, he had to wait a few minutes, but he told himself that if she didn't come after five minutes, he would leave.

As he waited, the attendant asked him if he wanted to try his luck at the lottery, free of charge.

"Sure." he answered as he gave her his trainer ID. "Twentieth time's the charm."

After scanning it, the attendant was pleased to tell him: "Congratulations! The last digit matched!"

"Great! What do I win?" Brendan asked excitedly. He had never won at this lottery before.

The brown-haired attendant reached under the counter and brought out a perfume bottle. "A free bottle of Skitty Sensation!"

Brendan's smile immediately disappeared and almost formed a grimace. Reluctantly, he grabbed the perfume bottle and uttered a forced "thank you," although he tried to appear as grateful as he could out of politeness. Right after he had put in his bag, he received a call. It was his father.

"Brendan!" he said. "Where are you?"

"Uh… right now I'm at Lilycove, but I was just about to leave."

"What are you doing there? Well, no matter. I need you to come here right now! An amazing discovery has just been made and I don't want you to miss any more of it."

Brendan kept looking afar to see if he could spot May as he listened to his father, but when he didn't see a trace of her, he answered:

"Alright, Dad, I'll be there in a minute. Literally." and he hung up.

He quickly walked out the front door and upon leaving, saw that his Charizard was bickering with another trainer's Tropius. The trainer was a slightly podgy, dark-haired young man in shorts and a t-shirt, and he seemed quite angry. Standing next to him, trying to calm him down was none other than May and her mother.

"May!" Brendan exclaimed. "You're here. I thought you were inside."

"We just got here." answered May's mother. "I take it my husband told you we left soon after we did."

"Hey!" cried the podgy trainer. "What's your Charizard's problem? He snarled at my Tropius as soon as we landed."

The two flying Pokémon were staring at each other as if they had a bone to pick with one another. Every once in a while, Charizard would snarl or snap at Tropius, who would back away slightly, and snap back.

"Oh, I'm sorry guy," Brandon said. "He's a bit proud and this is his way of showing it to other Pokémon. I don't know where he gets it. Come on, Charizard, stop it." he told it firmly, as he grabbed its arm. "Sorry, May, but I won't be able to go Wailmer watching today, my father wants me to go to the Mossdeep Research Center with him and my mother."

"Did they finally call him back?" asked May's mother.

"No, that's why he's there now." Brendan said, as he chuckled. "Sorry again, May."

"Don't worry about it so much, Brendan." she replied with a smile. "It's not like we can't go tomorrow or any other time."

Charizard snapped again, and Brendan gave him a firm tug to make him stop. He also apologized to the trainer once more, who seemed to understand but was still a bit bitter. It was at this point, too, that the young trainer left with his Pokémon, who continued staring at Charizard until it was fully turned around. The fire type, however, kept its gaze.

"Yeah, you're right." Brendan continued. "I really need to be going now, but call me whenever your Pokénav gets back from the repair shop."

"Will do. You just tell me the news about whatever it is that your father discovered."

"Will do."

Charizard let out a short roar, and Brendan pulled him away, saying: "Will you stop it! Gosh, what is your problem?" he had to force him to turn his back completely, and even then, Charizard kept his head turned, with his gaze locked at the far-off Tropius, before turning it around as well. Soon after, Brendan hopped on him, and they were both off to Mossdeep City. Brendan waved at May and her mother as he left.

And so, finally, he arrived at Mossdeep city and landed in front of the Research Center where his parents and what looked like a scientist were waiting for him. Soon after getting off his Charizard, his father approached him.

"Sorry about that, Dad." said Brendan. "I kind of forgot to tell May about today and I had to go tell her, it was long but anyway, the important thing is that I'm here."

"Yes it is," replied his father. "and wait until I tell you what it is that you that you missed!"

"The comet landed today!" said Brendan's mother, enthusiastically.

"Really?" asked Brendan, half surprised and half intrigued.

"It landed in the desert near Route 111." said the scientist who was with them.

"Oh, Brendan, this is Professor Klaus," his father said to him. "He's the head supervisor here at the Center."

"Pleased to meet you." said Brendan, as he shook his hand.

"Your father has made quite a discovery." replied Professor Klaus "We managed to catch the irregular celestial activity and the vibrations that the object made upon landing with our machines."

"Do you have any footage?"

"No, but we just sent some of our top experts to go over and verify. They'll call us as soon as they see anything."

"But in the meantime," continued Professor Birch. "We can show you the predicted landing and calculations on the computer."

"Uh…"

Brendan's tentative utterance didn't stop the professor from dragging him through the Research Center's doors and showing him what he indeed had to show him. Mr. Howard and Professor Birch's wife followed suit. It is unfortunate to say that Brendan was right in thinking that today was going to be a long day.

* * *

May and her mother were walking back to Littleroot town and were in the middle of walking down route 111. Several campers dressed in green were either hiking uphill or partaking in battles, while several hikers entered and left the harsh desert, hoping to experience a rush in their hike. A little further away, behind a few oak trees, there was a trainer in the middle of a challenge against the Winstrate family in their yard.

In the middle of the route, near the entrance to Mount Chimney, there were a large group of people assembled and speaking. Quite a large group. About 30 some people, which included campers, hikers, beauties, youngsters, what have you. They were all clamouring about something. Curious to see what it was, May and her mother went over and asked someone who was relatively outside of the circle.

"It was incredible!" proclaimed the brown-eyed, red-haired youngster. "A huge rock Pokémon was walking here! Right in the middle of the route!"

"What?" asked May's mother, understandably intrigued. "How long ago was this?"

"Not even fifteen minutes ago!"

"How big?" asked May.

"It looked about twenty feet tall." said a young camper, close by.

"It looked like it would have been a blast to scale!" added a fairly large hiker.

"And where is it now?" asked May's mother.

"It went around the side of the mountain, so we can't see it anymore, but we all think it's going to the top of Mount Chimney, or at least Fallarbor town. Man, it was really something!"

May's mother kept speaking to the other eyewitnesses about this apparent mystery Pokémon, but May was completely silent, looking elsewhere, steeped in her own reflection.

From far away, two people could be seen running quickly toward the group, a woman and a man. The woman was holding a microphone in her hand, while the man had a large camera on his shoulders. As they approached, they became clearer to see. The woman had short, blue hair and was wearing a sleeveless, blue shirt with a white collar and jeans. The man had short black hair with a red cap covering the top of it, and was wearing a basic white shirt with jeans as well. He appeared quite sturdy, especially compared to the woman next to him. He also appeared much more exhausted than her, as he had been lugging that enormous camera with him as he ran. Finally, they stopped in front of the crowd, and the cameraman crouched down, pointing the camera in front of his lady friend.

"Am I ok?" the woman uttered to him as she looked into the camera he was pointing at her. "Is my hair good? O-ok, turn it on, nnnnow!" and she started. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your trusty reporter Gabby, live on the spot in route 111! We have just gotten word that a very large and unknown Pokémon has been seen trekking in what is usually peaceful route 111. As soon as we got word of it, we rushed right over, although unfortunately, it appears, we are too late, as the creature is no longer within sight; but left in its stead are very large footsteps." As Gabby said these words, the cameraman pointed the camera toward very large, round holes in the ground, placed as if they were footsteps.

The reporter continued: "And a large group of eyewitnesses, that I'm sure are ready to divulge any information they have on this behemoth… this… this colossal rock monster. Let's go see if anyone has anything to say about it."

Gabby started walking towards May, who seemed to rather enjoy not being included in the conversation. It was too late before she could do anything though, as the obnoxious reporter had already parked herself next to her and started asking her questions.

"Excuse me miss…" said Gabby, before pointing the microphone towards May.

"M-May…" she said, hesitantly.

"May, I see you're here with your mother."

"Hello." said her mother, as she peeked her head in to get closer to the microphone.

"Miss May, could you please tell me and the viewers watching what it was exactly that you saw walking here on route 111?"

"Uh… I-I didn't really see anything… I just got here."

"Oh…" Gabby took a quick look at the camera, as she wasn't expecting that kind of answer, before continuing. "Well, I'm sorry to have bothered you miss May, excuse me while I go find some actual witnesses. Excuse me! You there, in the tacky blue hat! How did this colossal Pokémon affect your perspective on life?"

Gabby and Ty moved away from the two women and soon all of the pressure was off of her. She still had a strange look about her and appeared to be deep in thought.

"Well, this certainly is an interesting situation, wouldn't you say May? Where could that Pokémon have come from?"

"I think I know, Mom." May responded.

"What?"

"From what they described, I may have already seen that Pokémon."

"Um… are you sure about that?"

"I'm positive, but to be sure we'll need to check the desert."

"The desert? May, please stop putting me on."

"Mom, I'm serious. If what I think is true then the other two might be awoken as well and who knows what they might do?"

"What other two? May, what is with you?"

"Just come with me, and I'll explain on the way." she said, as she grabbed her reluctant mother's arm and headed for the desert.

"May! Stop! I'm not in the mood for any of this foolishness! Oohh…."

May didn't listen, she kept holding her mother by her arm and ran steadily toward the desert. The massive sandstorm, into which they were now trekking, could be seen from afar.


	3. Chapter 2: The Island Cave

I hope the story seems okay up until now. I have about ten more chapters already written and waiting to be uploaded, so I'll post a new chapter every week. That is, until I finish posting them all, and then you'll have to wait for I-don't-know-how-long for my next updates (I still haven't finished writing it). Anyway, this is the first chapter with a true action scene to it. Tell me what you think! Thanks.

Edit: I made a mistake with the titles. I originally called this one "Trouble in Dewford" whereas it should be "The Island Cave." Sorry about that...

Chapter 2

The Island Cave

"And this here is the screen we use to monitor celestial activity." said Professor Birch, pointing to a large green screen that was fashioned much like a Cartesian chart. On the screen itself there were several stars, some large, and some small. A few of them were zoomed in and had little texts of information displayed next to them. "This entire screen is a live representation of what's going on above our heads. As you can see there isn't much activity going on here, so let's see what there is on the other side of the planet.

"Uh-huh." said Brendan, staring at it with his arms crossed. Professor Birch kept on talking and he just kept looking at the screen and nodded every now and then, not really paying attention to all that he was saying.

The Mossdeep Research Center was enormous. The room that everyone was currently in, that is, the main research room, was extremely wide, and the screen itself took up almost all of the space on the walls. There were pairs of brown desks lined up from the front all the way to the back of the room, with several scientists performing calculations and reading certain documents on them.

"As you can see, here," continued the professor "there appears to be a kind of irregularity among this constellation over here, this star appears to be burning faster than this particular one, and-"

"Dad?" Brendan interrupted. He had waited until there weren't any of the scientists directly near them to speak up.

"What is it, Brendan?"

"Did anyone here ever tell you why they didn't call you back?"

"Not exactly, as soon as we came in they started talking to me about the comet that had landed. Naturally, I had forgotten all about them not calling me."

"Oh, alright then…"

Professor Birch sighed. "Brendan, I know what you're thinking, but I can assure you that this is a minor detail in what is actually a grand scientific discovery."

"I know, Dad. I just hope you'll get some actual recognition that you deserve. I don't want these people to take advantage of you like everyone else does."

"Firstly, I can assure you that no one has taken advantage of me in the sense that you seem to be implying."

"Yeah, try telling that to those idiot reporters that humiliated you last year. Not to mention taking all the credit to your discovery."

"Recognition is not what I'm after, Brendan. I just get so excited about any kind of advancement made in the Pokémon World that it's enough to satisfy me. I don't need fame or recognition of any kind."

"Don't you at least find it frustrating that almost none of your peers acknowledge you or studies?"

"No, not really. Besides, these people are quite busy with their own research, so it's understandable."

"Are they? I see how they ignore any suggestion you make about the theories that they have. You've got plenty of great ideas, and I'm sorry to say it but no one seems to care. Couldn't you at least speak up for yourself?"

"I'm sorry you feel that way Brendan, but I feel no need to. I may have no peers that respect me, but that is far from being a bother. As long as I can conduct my research, I am happy."

"That's great, Dad." Brendan said, appearing somewhat resentful.

"Brendan, what is it exactly that you want me to say? That I don't care about what people try to do to me? I don't. So are you worried that I may not be as close to you or your mother as I should be? I can assure you then, that that is not the case."

At that moment, Brendan was startled by a call he was receiving on his Pokénav. He didn't recognize the number, though.

"Hello?" he asked.

"Brendan, this is May." May responded. She had a slight tone of distress in her voice.

"May? Where are you calling from, I thought your Pokénav was being-"

"It is. I'm using my mother's phone. Listen, I need you to come meet me at the Island Cave on Route 105."

"What Island Cave? There's an Island Cave on that route?"

"Yes, on the West of the route. Fly over there on your Charizard and I'll keep an eye out for you. I'll make a signal so you can see me."

"What is this for, exactly? I'm kind of busy now." soon after saying this, however, he realized that he may not be, seeing his father steeped deep in his research papers.

"Did you hear about Regirock appearing on Route 111?"

"What!"

"Ok then, just come and I'll explain when you get here, it'll be too long to explain over the phone."

It was at this point that Brendan remembered that the Island Cave was where Regice was housed, and so he deducted that something was going on with the Regis, "Do you think that it has something to do with the comet?" he asked.

"That's what I'd like to figure out, I want to see if the other two are active, so come with me to the Island Cave, and then we'll go to the Ancient Tomb, bring your father with you."

"Uh… ok."

Brendan knew as well as you do that this was easier said than done. His father had his nose stuck in his papers and was deeply concentrated. Grabbing his attention would be no easy matter, if it could be grabbed at all.

"Uh… Dad?" Brendan muttered. Professor Birch did not respond. "Dad." he said a little louder, but he still received no response. "Dad!" he said, fairly loud, but not too loud.

"Hmm, yes?" he responded, nonchalantly.

"Are you busy right now?"

"Yes…" he responded, after a brief pause.

"Regirock's been sighted!"

Professor Birch's eyes widened. He quickly lifted his head up. "What? When?"

"About an hour ago." Brendan replied, after having asked May the exact same question for confirmation.

"By whom?"

"A lot of people, apparently, on Route 111."

"Wh-near the desert?"

"Yeah."

"Oh my goodness… this is… extraordinary. The very day that the comet landed… this can't be any kind of coincidence."

"May's going to see if Regice's still in his cave, and we're thinking maybe you should come."

"You'd better go without me, I'm going to find out more news about this Regirock, and alert the other scientists here. Tell me whatever you find out."

"Right. I'm on my way, May!"

"Alright," May said. "Meet me there in the next ten minutes."

"Fine."

Brendan hung up, and said bye to his father before quickly exiting the building, hoping to find his Charizard waiting for him at the entrance. Unfortunately for him though, it wasn't.

"Well, that's just fantastic." he said to himself. "Charizaaaaaard!" he yelled out in the distance, with his hands cupped over his mouth. After several calls, he finally heard something that resembled a response. Faint roars coming from the back of the research center. "Oh, great." he said to himself.

He quickly dashed around the center and precipitated toward the area where he heard the cry. Much to his displeasure, he saw Charizard, perched upon a short cliff at the edge of the shore, snarling and growling at a trainer's Gyarados. The trainer was a young, blonde Swimmer, who was sitting atop her Gyarados' head, trying to calm it down. When Brendan arrived, he quickly went in front of his raging Pokémon and tried pushing it away from Gyarados. The fire-dragon kept snarling and snapping at the water-snake, who snarled back viciously.

"Goodness, I'm really sorry about this." said the Swimmer. "I've always trained Gary to be competitive in battle, and I guess he took it to heart."

"I assure you," replied Brendan. "This is entirely my fault. This big orange dummy thinks he's stronger than he actually is. This is the second Pokémon he's tried to pick a fight with today."

"Down! Down, Gary! Well, I guess we're both to blame."

"Yeah…" Brendan said, as he chuckled. He then went to pull Charizard away and looked at him face to face. "Listen to me you overgrown gecko, I need to get to the Island Cave straight away, so I need you to swallow your pride and fly there as fast as you can."

Charizard obeyed, but as Brendan climbed up on him, he gave Gyarados a dirty look, which was returned.

"Sorry again, about all this. I hope that one day we can maybe cool things off between them over a battle."

"That sounds great, my name's Chrissy, what's yours?"

"Brendan," he said, as he was slowly lifted in the air. "What's your Pokénav number?"

The two eventually exchanged Pokénav numbers and Brendan was quickly off to the Island Cave, perched atop his Charizard's back. A sharp, cold wind passed through as they flew toward route 105.

* * *

May had already made it to the Island Cave, and had been waiting almost five minutes for Brendan to come. Her Blaziken was standing next to her, keeping her company, and the two had their eyes fixed at the sky, awaiting any sign of their friend. The soft sound of the waves crashing on the shore of the island filled the air, and as she waited, May gazed at the horizon, seeing nothing but water, and certain trainers partaking in battle from afar.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, May spotted a small dot in the sky directly above her. "Finally!" she exclaimed. "Brendan's here."

She was right, the dot became bigger and bigger, and soon, she was able to perceive the bright orange coloration of Charizard, and in no time, he swooped down in front of her and landed gently. Brendan jumped off.

"Hey May. What's up, Blaze?"

"Great, you're here." she said, as she ran toward him. Blaziken nodded and uttered a "blaze." as salutations.

May took a quick glance around and above her before asking Brendan: "Where's your father?"

"Oh right, I forgot to tell you. He won't be coming for now; he's decided to stay and talk about it to the other scientists there, if they'll even listen to him."

"Oh, alright then. So it's just you and me?"

"Looks like it."

Soon after saying that, Brendan had a strange look on his face: a grimace of sorts.

"What's wrong?" asked May.

He took a sniff near her and immediately after doing so jerked away in disgust. "Uggh! That smell! Is that…?"

"Yes, it's Skitty Sensation. I bought a couple of bottles with my mother at Lilycove."

"What? Are you out of your mind?"

"I take it you don't like it?"

"It's not a question of taste, that stuff is some kind of poison."

"Oh, stop exaggerating. It's not that bad."

"It is, actually." Brendan said, muffled by the sound of his arm covered over his mouth.

May sighed. "Let's just go and inspect the cave, alright? I was actually pretty excited to be coming here, and I don't want you to ruin the moment with your immature comments."

"Fine, sorry then… I'll do my best to seep it in, but I can't help it if my lungs cave in on themselves. I hope you know CPR."

"Oh, shut up."

The duo returned their Pokémon, and precipitated toward the large brown cave and entered through the small black hole that was the entrance. Inside, it was surprisingly well-lit. The cave was very small though, and they only had to proceed through a tiny corridor (which was very, very high) before entering the main chamber. The place was damp, but not too much, so it was still slightly comfortable. Of course, Brendan wasn't very comfortable anyway, having to put up with May's enchanting musk. He huffed, puffed and groaned, much to her annoyance.

As they walked, May had time to tell Brendan about her experience of going to the Desert Ruins with her mother and discovering an absent Regirock, to which he had several questions. One of which was quite important:

"How come Regirock awoke now? I assume it has something to do with the comet but…"

"Maybe the vibrations woke him up." answered May. "That's why I'm not holding my breath hoping that Regice is awake, he might be sound asleep like he always was."

"Yeah, and then there's still Registeel. Hey, how come we didn't split up to go see them both?"

"Well, I just feel that it's more fun together, not to mention safer, it makes us feel less alone."

"Yeah, you're right about that. Plus, if Registeel leaves now, he wouldn't go very far without being spotted. But what if we picked the wrong one and Registeel wakes up first."

"Then at least we'll be on time for Regice's awakening. And now, there's the question of what exactly they're going to do once they're awake. They can't really freely walk around Hoenn, they could cause havoc."

"If ever that happens, we're going to have to find a way to stop them. But what if they're docile?"

"I guess they'll just take what they're looking for and leave, or go back to their chambers."

"But what are they looking for?"

It was at this point that the two stepped out of the corridor and into the main chamber, where Regice was supposed to be staying. It was very cold. The chamber was big, enormous, actually. It was about 100 metres high, and 200 metres long. Several stalagmites and stalactites were spread about up and down, some completely covered in ice. In fact, several large spots of ice could be found on the floor, walls and ceiling.

In the center of the room stood Regice. Yet, he wasn't the only one in the room. Someone else was there, or rather… something else. A small, red figure, roughly the size of May and Brendan, perhaps a little taller. It had its back turned and had one hand raised up toward Regice. Its appearance startled May and Brendan so that they stopped in their tracks.

"W-What is that thing?" Brendan whispered to May.

"How should I know?" May whispered back. "I've never seen anything like that before in my life."

"You didn't see it come in while you were waiting for me?"

"No… it must've entered right after I landed."

"This is definitely weird…what is it doing?"

"It looks like it's trying to-"

May was interrupted by a very loud rumbling sound. A loud, deep cry shook the walls of the cave and echoed everywhere inside it. May and Brendan could feel it in their stomachs.

Regice had been awakened and was slowly moving its arms around; moving them as if he had not done so for a millennia. He was brighter than when they had entered, and his ice body shone vibrantly like a crystal as its yellow eyes gleamed vivaciously. It was at this point that the red figure turned its head slowly and peered at our heroes. It turned around completely and slowly advanced toward them. Both of its arms morphed and turned into two sets of tendrils, interwoven through each other, shaped like double helixes.

May and Brendan each took out one poké ball and clicked them, preparing for whatever was to come. Eventually, the thing reached them both, and stopped. Its entire body could now be seen: it had an oval head, with two square extensions on both sides. Its face was blue, and there were two black sockets in it, that housed its eyes. In its chest, there was a purple crystal ebbed inside. Its legs were red as well, and gradually became thinner toward its feet, of which it had none, simply two points at the end of its legs.

"H-Hii…" said Brendan, in a nervous tone, not quite sure how to react. The creature had them both glued to the floor. Neither of them was bold enough to move away, or closer for that matter.

The creature did not respond, it only peered at them both, glancing back and forth between the two.

"May, what should we do?" Brendan asked, turning his head toward her a couple of times for a few seconds so as not to keep his eyes off the creature.

At this point, the thing let out a cry. A deep and low alien-esque resonance. Brendan quickly turned back his head and saw the creature inches away from his face, peering into his eyes. He backed away slightly, and the creature advanced some more. It seemed like hours, for Brendan, simply staring at those cold and lifeless eyes, his mind seemed to have just froze, everything felt almost dream-like.

Then, a flash. A flash of memories appeared in his mind, and hit him like an electric shock. He let out a cry, backed away and put his hand on his forehead.

"Brendan!" cried May. The creature then turned its head toward her, and she was almost panicking. It took a few steps toward her, but stopped suddenly, as if her presence had some power over it. Out of nervousness, she dropped her poké ball, and Blaziken materialized right in front of her, already in its fighting position. The thing took a small step back, being somewhat cautious, but then immediately used its power. All it took was a glare, and Blaziken was physically hurled back. May had ducked, so he hit the wall of the cavern, and slid down on his bottom.

"Blaziken!" cried May, as she ran toward him.

The thing made a dash for the exit of the cave, but before he got to the entrance of the tunnel, Brendan put himself in front of it, blocking its path, and lifting his arm toward him, with a poké ball in his fist.

"Don't move!" he said to it.

The creature did nothing, it simply stared at him with its dead eyes. During this time, May (after having withdrawn Blaziken) had the bright idea of taking out her Pokédex and scanning the thing.

"W-What did you do to me?" Brendan asked, now realizing that maybe this was not such an intelligent idea.

The creature still did not do anything, but after a few seconds, it took a step forward. Worried, Brendan took a step back, and after taking a few more steps forward, the creature leaped directly over him, and dashed out of the tunnel entrance as soon as it landed behind the boy.

After a few minutes of stupefaction, Brendan hurled his poké ball to the ground, and out came Charizard.

"Charizard! Go chase that... that..."

"Deoxys!" May cried. "Go and chase Deoxys!"

Charizard heeded the orders and immediately flew in the same direction, while Brendan kept his head turned toward May.

"What?" he asked.

At that moment, they heard a very loud and familiar cry which echoed throughout the cave and shook their very bodies once more: it was Regice. He had started moving and was heading straight toward them. His arms were placed in the back of him as his pointy feet simply slid on the ground, leaving a thin streak of ice wherever he went. The height of the cave entrance (that is to say, the corridor through which they had come) and of Regice was roughly the same, which meant that the two heroes had to act fast.

"Oh man." said Brendan, his eyes locked on the ice behemoth.

"He's heading straight for us." said May, her feet frozen in place.

"There isn't any time to get out of the way..."

"...We'll just have to run back!"

As soon as she said that, the duo immediately turned around and ran down the tunnel. They were pretty far ahead of Regice, but not that far, so they didn't dare even turn their back. Because the entrance was so small for him, Regice was touching the ceiling and certain parts of the wall, scraping it as he advanced and taking off a significant portion of rock. To May and Brendan, this sounded like the cave was collapsing upon itself, and only enticed them to run faster.

Finally, after what seemed like ages, the light from the outside could be seen, and before they knew it, both teenagers were outside and moved out of the way to let Regice pass without being trampled. Brendan moved to the left, and May moved to the right as Regice went straight ahead, stopping only at the shore of the beach passing Deoxys and Charizard, who were in the middle of a small spar, of which Deoxys had the advantage.

The fire-type was trying to burn it from above with several Flamethrowers, but Deoxys kept dodging them, and retaliated with a powerful Psychic every time. Eventually, Charizard tried dashing into him with Fly, but the creature jumped onto him, avoiding the attack and making additional damage by gripping him on the back and hitting him. When the dragon tried to crush him by throwing himself back-first on the ground, Deoxys simply hopped off, and landed safely on the ground.

"This thing is tough." said Brendan.

"Let's see if it can stay tough when we double the challenge." replied May, as she prepared her poké ball. "Go! Blastoise!"

Blastoise came out, preparing his water cannons and letting out a low "blast.…" Both Pokémon were now in between Deoxys.

May and Brendan exchanged looks, then nodded mutually. The battle had commenced.

"Charizard!" Brendan cried. "Start off with a Flamethrower!"

Charizard was visibly tired, but he heeded his trainer's orders and attacked. Like before, Deoxys dodged it by leaping into the air with graceful speed.

"Blastoise! Water gun!" cried May, soon after.

"Blast!" Blastoise crouched, aimed, and shot. This time, it hit Deoxys, and it was sent flying, landing behind Charizard.

"Flamethrower! Quickly!"

The beast heeded Brendan's orders again, and swiftly turned around and spewed its flames. Deoxys rolled away swiftly to the side, but the attack still managed to hit a part of his arm. His blue and red tendrils were now charred.

"Surf, Blastoise!"

Upon hearing the sounds of waves behind him, Charizard quickly flew up high, high into the air. An enormous tidal wave had formed behind him, with Blastoise riding it. It fell back down, crashing upon the helpless Deoxys, and dragging him to the end of the shore. The water turtle, upon crashing, slid carefully on the shore, keeping his traction, and stopping near the end it.

Brendan turned towards May and gave her a dirty look.

"What?" May said. "It worked, didn't it?"

Deoxys' face was in the sand, so it put his arms on the ground, and lifted itself up. All it could see at that point was a giant, vicious blue turtle heading toward him, so he used a powerful Psychic, and sent Blastoise flying, and falling into the sea.

"Fly!" Brendan ordered.

Predicting what was behind him, Deoxys instantly turned around and leapt over Charizard. However, this time, Charizard expected this, and did a quick 180 in mid air, and landed back on the ground, not far from Deoxys. The blue and red creature managed to morph the tendrils of one of its arms into a fist, and gave a hard punch to Charizard, who ducked, and retaliated with a head smash.

Deoxys took a few steps back, and Charizard kept advancing, giving a few hits here and there to the creature, who kept dodging them. Eventually, after Charizard had tried to sweep its tail under Deoxys' legs, it leapt up and gave a hard kick in Charizard's face, who fell on his back.

Right after that, Blastoise came leaping out from the opposite end of the shore, high in the air. He readied his cannons, and, still in the air, shot several large water shots onto Deoxys on the ground before falling quite hard back on the shore. Deoxys managed to avoid most of them by hopping from side to side, but was still hit by a few of them here and there.

Now, the situation was back to where they started. Deoxys was, yet again, in the middle of the two starter Pokémon, who were preparing themselves for another attack. Blastoise's cannons were starting to fill up with water, as he crouched down and positioned them toward the enemy; and Charizard opened his mouth, as he crouched down as well, and combustion energy started building up inside him.

At this point, Deoxys started to change. Its entire body was morphing into something else, it seemed. Its legs got thinner, and so did its arms. Its head started to change shape as well, and seemed to be growing longer.

Not wanting to take any chances, Brendan and May both ordered an attack. And so, Blastoise blasted the water out of his cannon, and Charizard spewed the flames from out of his mouth, when the two beams collided a massive explosion occurred in the middle, where Deoxys was. May and Brendan covered their faces with their arms as the wind and sand blew toward them.

It took a few seconds but, eventually, everything became clear, Blastoise and Charizard were huffing and puffing out of fatigue, and the two humans were flabbergasted at the sight of absolutely nothing. Deoxys was gone.

"What just happened?" Brendan asked.

Further down, at the very end of the shore, the two spotted a white path starting from it and continuing onto the surface of the water. As they ran to inspect it further, they could see that it was a large ice path. Leading all the way to the end of the horizon, and was visible as far as the eye could see. Far away on the path, a small dark figure could be seen, getting smaller and smaller.

"It's an ice path!" said May. "Regice froze the surface of the water and made an ice path. We hadn't noticed since we were busy with Deoxys."

"And that's where Deoxys is." replied Brendan, as he pointed to the small black speck, now barely visible. "Look."

"Where is he going?"

"Isn't it obvious? He's going to wake up the last one."

"But he's going to Dewford. Registeel is nowhere near Dewford."

At that moment, the two were startled at the sound of Brendan's Pokénav ringing. Without any haste, he quickly answered:

"Hello?"

"Brendan!" It was Professor Birch. "Where are you?"

"At the shore of the Island Cave, something very strange just happ-"

"I need you to come with me straight away to Mount Chimney!"

"Mount Chimeny? Why?"

"Regirock disappeared completely half an hour ago. We're going to investigate and we need you and May to come this time."

"We?"

"Norman is coming with me."

"Where did you see that Regirock disappeared?"

"It was on the news."

"Oh no... I hope it wasn't-"

"Just come." his father interrupted, not wanting to hear another complaint. "We can't let this pass for long."

"But we're kind of busy. We just met up with a strange new Pokémon and he got awa-"

"New Pokémon?" he answered, quite interested. "What did it look like?"

"It was a blue and red humanoid thing, with tendrils on its arms. Deoxys, I think its name was."

"Deoxys, you say? Do you think that he perhaps has a link to Regirock?"

"He does, we just saw him wake up Regice."

"What?"

"We tried to hold Deoxys down but he just left on an ice path made by Regice."

"Fascinating... so this Deoxys was able to wake them up... no doubt that Registeel is next in line."

"That's what we figured, but he's going toward Dewford. Maybe you should go check on Registeel as well."

"Alright Brendan, you investigate this case, and we'll go see where Regirock went and go pay a visit to Registeel. I'll call you if anything comes up."

"Same here." he said, before hanging up. "Alright May," he motioned to Charizard to come over. "We're going to do us a little alien chasing."

"Um... Who was that, though?" she asked, as she withdrew Blastoise and took out another poké ball.

"My dad. Who else? Apparently, Regirock disappeared, so he's going to investigate it with your dad and see what's up; I told him he should keep an eye on Registeel at the same time. But in the meantime, _we're _going after _that_." He said those last two pronouns as he pointed to himself and the horizon respectively.

May tossed out the poké ball she was holding, and Skarmory materialized in front of her. A tall, proud bird, was he, looking always straight ahead and avoiding any kind of distraction. He shook himself a few times and scratched his metallic feathers with his beak as he waited patiently for his trainer to embark upon him.

"Boy, things are just getting stranger and stranger." she said, as she hopped onto her bird.

"Isn't that the truth?" he said, safely on Charizard's back.

With a few flutter of their wings, the two Pokémon were already high, high into the air, heading for Dewford, as well as whatever might be awaiting them there.


	4. Chapter 3: Trouble in Dewford

Chapter 3

Trouble in Dewford

Hey everybody, chapter 3 is up! This one is more of a plot advancement, so there isn't really any action per se, but I find it interesting nonetheless. Don't worry though, the story will intensify later on, lol. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, and tell me what you all think, I really look forward to hearing what anyone has to say. Thanks a lot!

* * *

An exceptionally cold wind was piercing through the two heroes as they soared high above the calm waters of Route 105. They were following the path of ice made by the recently awakened Regice and heading for whatever destination it and Deoxys had gone. Several swimmers and their Pokémon could be seen gathering around it, staring at it or attempting to climb onto it. Of course, the path was very, very slippery and was virtually impossible to walk on for anyone.

May and Brendan were flying pretty close to each other on their flying Pokémon, so they could easily speak to each other.

"Well," May started, after a few minutes of silence. "This has been a very strange day."

"Very strange, indeed." said Brendan. "And I have a feeling that this is all just the tip of the ice path. No pun intended."

"Let's just see what we can gather based on what we know. Who knows? We may be able to make sense of something. So, Regirock and Regice are awake, both because of Deoxys."

"Which means that after waking up Regirock, he managed to get to the Island Cave, in the same time span it took us to get there after having discovered Regirock."

"He woke up Regirock first…"

"A few hours after the comet had landed…"

"... Hmm... do you think that maybe-" Brendan asked, before being rudely interrupted.

"Oh, Brendan!" May exclaimed. "I completely forgot to ask. What did Deoxys do to you?"

"What? Oh, that! I had completely forgotten." he exclaimed, slapping his hand on his forehead. "That really was quite a weird experience."

"Well, what happened? Tell me, tell me."

"It was... weird. When he started staring at me, I kind of didn't know what to do, you know? I had the shivers... ugh... it gives me the shivers just thinking about it again. Then... I-I'm not sure what happened, I just got a flash."

"A flash of what?"

"Images, I think. Memories, actually. In a split second, it felt like I had relived one hundred moments that had happened years ago."

"Like what?"

"Everything, basically. Starting out as a trainer, conquering the Pokémon league, catching all the Pokémon I have now, stopping Team Magma and capturing Groudon. They were all so clear, like I had just done those things yesterday."

"So, you basically remembered everything that happened three years ago…"

"Yeah... it all finished with my capture of Groudon... No wait! My deposit of him in the PC box. Yes, I remember it so vividly. That's the last thing that flashed in my mind before I fell over..." He stared into the distance for a while, contemplative, before asking his friend "What do you think about it, May?"

"Um... it seems kind of obvious. Deoxys scanned your mind." she answered, looking intently at her friend.

"Hmm... that could be a possibility... but then why didn't he scan yours?" he said, looking down in a contemplative fashion once more.

"I don't know, maybe he was just satisfied with what he had from you."

"Perhaps... so what do you think he's going to do now?" he said, after a pause.

"Well, my first guess would be to go wake up Registeel, but he may not go there directly. We'll see what he'll have decided to do when we get to Dewford."

"It shouldn't be very hard. A giant golem of ice and a psychic alien can't be very hard to miss. Hey, did you happen to see it transform before it left?"

"Yes! It turned really thin, and weird… er."

"If that thing can morph, who knows what else it can do?"

"You're right. If it can morph, maybe it can also camouflage itself, or something. Who knows what it can do? We have no information on it." as she said this, she looked behind her, back to the diminishing view of the island cave, where everything had started.

"What did the Pokédex have to say about it?"

"Nothing, only a picture and the name. The description box was empty."

"So we're not the first people to have seen it…" he said, scratching his head with one hand while keeping his grip on Charizard with the other.

It was at that point that the two spotted the small patch of land that was Dewford right beneath them. They almost hadn't noticed until Brendan saw it, and said:

"Oh... land ho! Dewford is near."

"Ready for landing!" May responded, and the two slowly glided down onto the warm sand, near the island's Pokémon Center, where something interesting was going on.

Needless to say, what May and Brendan found wasn't peace and tranquility in the normally peaceful and tranquil island. People from all over the place were gathered together around the PokéCenter; something big had happened there. On the sand, they could see two clear tracks of ice, starting from the end of the ice path that they were following, turning toward the left, and ending at the other end of the shore, where another path of ice was formed on the water that led to somewhere beyond Route 107.

"Well, Regice is definitely gone." said Brendan, looking at the path. "He must have gone to see Registeel."

"But what of Deoxys?" asked May.

The two disembarked off of their Pokémon and walked up near the groups of people who were talking amongst themselves and who seemed rather bothered. Some were shifting around uneasily, and others were talking, whispering to themselves. Still more were pacing about, not sure exactly what was happening and what should be done. The entire group had encircled the PokéCenter completely. May and Brendan could estimate that there were at least one hundred people there.

There were so many of them that they could only see certain parts of the PokéCenter, so they decided to ask around. A young woman with a small child was on the outside of the group, peering over the shoulders of the others, trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on. May asked her:

"Excuse me, miss."

"Hm, yes?" the woman answered, as she turned around. The young child did the same.

"Could you please tell us what's going on? What happened in the PokéCenter? Was there some kind of accident?"

"I only wish I could. I just got here, so I'm not sure what exactly is going on, but I hear that people are trapped in there."

"In the Center?" asked Brendan.

"Yes, the entrance is sealed off."

"By what?" asked May.

"I don't know, but... say, how long has it been since you got here?"

"We literally just landed." answered Brendan.

"Then you missed something quite big. You see that ice path over there? I assume you followed it here, wondering who made it."

"Well…" he started, wanting to tell her what had _actually_ happened.

"An enormous, living block of ice came from it! It had two arms and two legs, and was sliding on it."

"Yes," May said. "We kind of-"

"Those tracks were left by it." she interrupted, pointing to the thin tracks of ice on the sand. "I saw it from my house, so all I saw was him leaving, but boy was it huge. At least twenty feet! And now all of this commotion at the PokéCenter... talk about strange. I don't like the looks of this."

"Me neither…" said Brendan.

"Well, thank you for your information, miss." May said, as the two started to leave.

"Glad I could help. I certainly don't know much more than you do, and I certainly hope it's nothing dangerous."

"I'm sure it's not."

The duo broke away from the group and immediately discussed amongst themselves.

"Well, this is a whole lot of weird." Brendan started. "What do you think is up with the PokéCenter?"

"I'm not sure…" May answered. "But we know that Regice left. The question is, did Deoxys go with him?"

As soon as she asked that, the two turned their heads toward the Center, and all the people that had gathered around it.

"I have a strange feeling he didn't." Brendan said.

"Me neither... Alright, you stay here and call our fathers; I'll see if I can get a closer look at things from above."

"Right."

Upon saying that, May hopped back onto Skarmory, and Brendan took out his Pokénav and called his father.

"Yes?" Professor Birch answered. The loud, rough sound of the working engine could be heard in the background, as if he were in a car. Brendan could still understand what was being said, but had to cover one ear and concentrate.

"Dad!" said Brendan "Are you busy?"

"No, no, it's quite alright."

"Did... did you find anything?"

"Not yet. Turn right here," he said, speaking away from the telephone. "N-No, right. Ah! I'm sorry Brendan. Yes, well, we've searched a large portion of Mt. Chimney, and we even asked around Lavaridge and Fallarbor, but we haven't had any luck."

"Huh... He really disappeared didn't he."

"You could say that, although it's quite strange that a twenty-foot behemoth should do such a thing."

"Well, anyway, me and May searched the-"

"May and _I_." corrected the professor.

"... Yeah..." Brendan replied, bemused by his father's idea to improve his grammar for something so trivial in a situation that may have been critical. "anyway, we searched Island Cave, and we have quite a story to tell you."

"I'm all ears, Brendan."

* * *

As Brendan told his father their story, May had flown directly above the PokéCenter with her Skarmory. Peering down, she saw a considerable space between it and the people around it. In front of the entrance were four people, analyzing the area, most notable the door, which had been encased in a large block of ice. There was tape around the Center, preventing people from approaching it within five meters.

"Descend slowly, Skarmory."

As she got closer, she could see that only three of the people she saw were _actually _people, the other was a Pokémon. She couldn't quite tell which one it was though, but it kept hitting the block of ice repeatedly. She also noticed two smaller Pokémon (she had presumed they were Growlithes) that were trying to melt the ice with a flamethrower. As she was gradually descending, a loud, booming voice startled her and her Skarmory.

"Attention citizen!" the voice said. As May looked closely she could see that the man speaking to her was a policeman, and he was holding a megaphone. "We're trying to clear this entire area from any disruptions, so we ask that you please retire your flying Pokémon outside of the perimeter. Thank you for your co-operation."

May had gotten the message, but she still stayed. She was trying to make out who the other two people were. Or rather, the one person who was standing near the Pokémon at the door. He seemed familiar. She cupped her hand over her eyes and tried to focus.

"Attention citizen!" the police officer started again. "We have asked you once, and we ask again that you exit the perimeter. We are trying to keep things in control and need no distractions."

It was at that point that May had recognized who it was that was standing next to the door, and she immediately tried calling out to him:

"Brawly! Hey, Brawly!" she yelled, as she waved frantically. He didn't notice her, as he was paying too much attention to his Hitmonlee. "Braaaawwwwwlyyy!"

"Citizen, this is your last warning. If you do not co-operate, we will be forced to use drastic measures to keep you out of our way."

It was here that Brawly looked up and noticed, after having squinted to get a better look, his former challenger. "May?" he said to himself, mildly reminiscent. "May!" He went up to the police officer and told him: "Pass me that megaphone, I know her."

"I'm sorry sir," the officer responded. "We can't have any common citizen interfering with us, we already have enough gawkers as it is, and we don't need this escalating into a dangerous situation."

"She's not just any common citizen. This is the girl who was crucial in the calming of Groudon and Kyogre three years ago. She's the one who caught Kyogre! Remember?"

The police officer stared vacuously at the burly gym leader for a few seconds after Brawly had said that. "Kyogre?" he asked, dumbfounded.

"Give me that." Brawly answered, as he snagged the megaphone and held it up. "May! It's good to say you again. Come on down here, and see if you can help us."

May listened and quickly swooped down, landing between Brawly and the police officer. She could now see the other person was an investigator, writing down notes on a small notepad next to the door, and Brawly's Hitmonlee was giving several kicks to the large ice wall blocking the door, only being able to break down a few pieces at a time. The Growlithe were between him, spewing Flamethrowers to try and help. May could now see that the door was encased in a very large block of ice, much thicker than from where she saw it up above.

"How are you doing, May?" Brawly asked, giving her a very firm handshake.

"Great." she answered, as she grimaced slightly. She turned toward the police officer and gave an awkward "Hi…" The officer simply nodded a greeting without showing any emotion.

"Well, I guess I should get you up to speed on what's happening." started the gym leader. "Why did you come here, anyway?"

"Because I'm already up to speed."

"Hm?" he asked with a grin, visibly intrigued.

"Well, um…" May started. She started to become shy in front of him, the police officer, and the investigator, who had just seen her land and started listening in. The Hitmonlee, however, continued kicking the ice wall and the Growlithe continued throwing their flames. "Me and Brendan kind of... I-I mean... Brendan and I kind of..."

May explained everything to the attentive listeners, and what she had to say shed quite a bit of light on what they were investigating. As soon as she had finished, it was her turn to have some information. Of course, she would have to wait a bit.

"So, where's Brendan now?" asked Brawly.

"He's outside the 'perimeter', calling his dad and my dad, they went to see where Regirock disappeared to. He's telling them what we found."

"Oh yes, Regirock, I almost forgot about him."

"You heard?"

"Everyone did." replied the police officer. "And with Regice awake, I've already sent a few of my men to look over Registeel's cave, if ever anything may happen."

"You don't think anything will, do you?" asked May.

"We can't be sure." said the investigator, in a relatively deep, raspy voice. "What happened here was borderline dangerous for Pokémon behaviour."

"So, uh... what _did _happen?"

"From what we've gathered from the people around here," Brawly started. "Regice came onto shore 15 minutes ago, with a strange, red and blue creature on him, which I now presume to be Deoxys. So, as soon as he got on shore, he stopped, and Deoxys jumped off of him, and allegedly ran toward the Poké Center."

"He went in?"

"Yeah! He just darted straight in, and before anyone could react, Regice shot an ice beam at the door, and...well, the result is right before your eyes."

"What about the people in there?"

"They're still there... with Deoxys."

"Oh my goodness, this is horrible."

"We're doing our best to get him out without using unnecessary brutal force to startle the Pokémon or the trapped citizens." said the police officer.

"Where are all your other Pokémon, Brawly?" May asked. "Why is only your Hitmonlee chucking away at the ice?"

"Well, I've only begun training with him recently and uh... well, I stored the others in a PC box... at least we have two Growlithe with us. Plus, the ice is _really _tough, I've never seen it this dense."

"I'll help." May said, with a strong determined voice. "Skarmory! Steel Wing that block of ice!"

"Skaaa!" Skarmory screeched, as it heeded its trainers orders. It hovered a bit in the air, before it dashed toward the chunk of ice, and rammed into it the side of its wings. A large piece fell off, and Skarmory gained some more momentum before ramming into the ice block again, breaking off another large chip.

Paired with Hitmonlee's kicks, and the Growlithe's flamethrowers, the enormous block of ice had disappeared in roughly a few seconds, revealing the closed door of the PokéCenter.

"Stand aside." Brawly said to May, as he advanced toward said door. However, upon reaching the right proximity, the automatic door did not slide open. The gym leader tried pulling both doors away from each other with his bare hands, groaning and panting as he did, but they were very tightly shut. They wouldn't budge at all.

"Ok," He said. "This isn't working."

"Perhaps the ice somehow made the circuitry in the door malfunction." Said the investigator.

"That doesn't explain why they're _firmly_ shut. The doors are made so that they'll open easily by hand when there's no power supplying them. Hm, I guess there's no other way around it. Hitmonlee!" he said, as he snapped his fingers and pointed toward the door.

"Wait!" May pleaded. "Aren't there people in there? We can't just knock the door down, what if someone's right behind it?"

"She's right." said the police officer. "We could also startle the Pokémon into attacking someone. Brute force should be our last resort."

"Well, any better ideas are welcome," Brawly responded. "but we need to think up something fast, who knows what Deoxys could be doing to them?"

"What about calling inside the PokéCenter?" Said May.

"We tried." replied the investigator, in a very emotionless tone. "There's no answer."

"How long ago was that?"

"As soon as it happened. Roughly, ten minutes ago."

"Well, it can't hurt to try again."

"...I suppose." he replied, without even changing the expression on his face.

As he took out his Pokénav to give another call, May was receiving one on hers. She answered:

"Hello?"

"May!" exclaimed a familiar voice. "What have you figured out?"

"Brendan?"

"Uh... yeah." he replied, as if it should be obvious.

"Oh, well, uh... it turns out that as soon as Deoxys came here he went straight into the PokéCenter and had Regice seal the door with a giant block of ice."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh."

"So we took off the block but the door still won't open, so the investigator is going to call inside and see what's up. Oh, and Brawly's with us."

"He is? Oh! Tell him I said hi."

"What? Brendan, I'm not going to do that, he's busy."

"What? Come on, he can't be that busy. And it's not like it won't take more than two seconds. Just say it."

"He's talking to the police officer, I don't want to disturb him."

"Fine, whatever."

"How did your conversation go with your father?" she asked, changing the subject. As soon as she had said that though, the inspector had gotten off the phone and started speaking with the police officer and Brawly.

"Hold on, Brendan, the inspector just got off the phone."

"Fine." he replied, in a stoic tone. "I'll be right here."

So May walked up to the two men and inquired as to what was happening.

"Well," the investigator started. "apparently, no one's hurt, but the nurse sounded distressed."

"So, Deoxys is still with them?"

"Yes, he's been busy toying with the PC this entire time."

"The PC?"

"He wants something, and he's apparently scanned everyone including the nurse for information on how to log on."

"Scanned?" Brawly asked. "What do you mean?"

"The nurse said it was some kind of mind scan. Something that jogged everybody's memory."

"That's what he did to Brendan, too." May added.

"He wants a Pokémon, it seems." said the police officer.

"I'd like to see him try to get one without an account." said Brawly.

"That's the thing." The inspector said. "The nurse thinks that he performed some kind of memory scan on her, and she said she received instant flashes of past events, including some when she logged on to the PC."

"The nurse's account can access every Pokémon that's been stored in a PokéCenter PC." the police officer continued.

"Oh…" said Brawly, understanding what that really implicated. "Which means that-"

"Deoxys wants Groudon!" cried May, interrupting the three, who looked at her strangely before exchanging glances between themselves.

"Uh... what do you mean exactly?" asked Brawly, visibly bemused.

"Groudon?" Brendan said, over the phone. "Who wants Groudon? What did you say, May?"

"Brendan!" May cried into the Pokénav, grasping it tightly in her hand as she held it toward her mouth. "For whatever the reason, Deoxys is after Groudon! He's trying to get a hold of him from the PC!"

"That's impossible, he can't log into my account."

"No, but he can log into the nurse's."

"Nurse's?" Brendan asked, inquisitively, before finally understanding what May meant. "Ooooohh... Oh! He wants Groudon!"

"Yes!"

"W-We have to stop him!"

"But... but…"

"How?"

A brief silence passed over the Pokénav waves in that moment, as neither had any idea what should be done. Hope seemed far away for the two, as far as Regice was. That was... until Brendan said:

"Oh! I got it! Hold on, I need to make a call quickly. You try to break that door down and stop him."

"What? To whom?" As May asked this, Brendan had already hung up. She let out an exasperated sigh and as she looked back toward the three men. She could see that they wanted an explanation immediately.

"Groudon?" asked Brawly, inquisitively.

* * *

Brendan scrambled to dial the number of the person he desperately wanted to talk to on his Pokénav (he opted not to search through his contact list as he thought it would take too much time). He was so nervous that he fumbled and had to start over twice, to his frustration. Finally, he got the number right, and it started ringing. Once... twice...

"Come on, come on!"

"Greetings." an eloquent, feminine voice answered before the fourth ring.

"Lanette?"

"Yes, this is she. How may I be of assistance, Brendan?"

"I need you to do something for me. Something drastic." Brendan responded, not bothering to ask how she knew it was him that was calling.

"You want me to shut down my PC storage system, yes?"

"Wh-yeah... right away... uh... but how do you-"

"Brendan, I may be a secluded hermit, but that doesn't mean I am unaware of current events. Besides, I'm constantly monitoring my PC system and can plainly see that Nurse Candice of Dewford's account has had 34 unsuccessful log-ins in the past 7 minutes, and that no nurse would be so neglectful as to try to log on 34 times in the time span of 7 minutes without bothering to pass her retinal and fingerprint scan."

"Uh…"

"And judging by the tone in your voice, you seem quite distressed, presuming that you too, are aware of the current situation in Dewford, I concluded that you wanted me to shut down the storage system due to fear that he (that is, whoever is trying to hack into the storage system account) may steal someone else's Pokémon. Yours, I presume?"

"Yes, yes, yes! Could you please shut it down now, please?"

"Already done."

"Oh, uh... thanks. So all the PC systems in all the PokéCenters are unusable then?"

"Correct."

"Oh, good. Well, thank you very much, Lanette. I was afraid that I'd lose my Groudon. Uh... by the way, is there any way to get back the-"

"Hm."

"What?"

"That's odd."

"Huh? What is?"

"No one can enter the system through normal means as soon as it's shut down, but there appears to be something that entered. Something that wasn't there before."

"That's not right."

"It isn't anything I programmed into the system, and it's active."

"What? How is that possible, you just closed the system down?"

"It must have hacked its way through. It's not a virus, but it's...it's heading into the storage files. Into... your account"

"That's definitely not right! Do something! Please!"

"Already done."

"You got it?"

"I inputted my Porygon into the system. I'll see if it can snatch Groudon's file and take him out before Deoxys' rogue agent does."

"Alright! I'll come over and pick it up."

"Take your time."

"K, thanks, bye."

"Good day."

As soon as Brendan hung up, he whistled loudly to call his Charizard, and quickly hopped on him. After a few flutter of his wings he was up in the air and headed straight for Route 114, to Lanette's abode. During this time, he managed to call May to bring her up to speed on what was happening.

"He sent an active agent to steal Groudon's file?" she asked.

"Yes, that's what he's doing right now. I'm going over to Lanette's to pick up the poké ball if and when she gets it back. You stay there and see if you can stop him personally."

"We will. Call me whenever you get Groudon."

"Right, see you."

With that, Brendan hung up and speeded to Lanette's as quickly as he could. Time could not be wasted.


	5. Chapter 4: Cybertronic Warfare

Chapter four's up guys! There isn't anything particular I have to say about it. Just that it's a bit long. Be prepared though, the next chapter is even longer! I hope you'll enjoy it all! And so, without further ado:

Chapter 4

Cybertronic Warfare

Brendan's heart was pounding like a jackhammer as he rode on the orange back of his Charizard. Soaring as fast as he could, high above the largely aquatic region in the land of Hoenn, he had nothing else on his mind other than the safe extraction of his Groudon.

He couldn't wait very long without an answer, so he took out his Pokénav and gave Lanette another call.

* * *

"Yes, Brendan?" she answered. Lanette was in her room. The lights were off and the only source of light she had was the artificial one from her computer screen. Piles upon piles of books and papers were scattered about her room in a horrible mess. Some even blocking the door. The twenty-nine-year-old was not really the organized type. Despite her reclusive nature, she wasn't quite what one would call a hermit, either. She went out frequently and had many friends around Hoenn, she just had a passion for technology, and when she was engrossed in it, she did not let it go for quite a while.

"Where are you at?" asked Brendan, from the other end of the Pokénav. It was placed in a small holder attached to on the side of her computer monitor; Lanette had put it on speaker phone so she would not have to hold it.

"If you wish to ask me how far I am in retrieving the file of Groudon I still have yet to reach it, and I'd kindly ask that you _not_ end your sentences with prepositions."

"How long is it supposed to take?"

"Anywhere between ten and fifteen minutes. Provided that Deoxys' viral agent does not get to it first."

"Ten to fifteen minutes?"

"Need I remind you that I closed down the system completely. I have to hack back into it if I want to get anything."

"But it's your system. Shouldn't you be more familiar with it?"

"If you're implying that I don't know my own storage system forwards and backwards than I'd have to correct you in saying that I do and that the time span of ten to fifteen minutes to hack into a system this big is quite exceptional for anyone."

"Right, right, sorry. I should be there in ten minutes, I'll try not to be too much of a bother until then."

"I implore you."

* * *

Porygon was racing through cyberspace, bypassing all of the locked programs and firewalls with quick efficacy. The cyberspace of Lanette's storage system was basically a series of narrow, blue tunnels, decorated with arbitrary white lines and binary codes all around it, moving up or down. All of these tunnels led to the accounts of different people, and Porygon was twisting and turning to get to Brendan's account.

After a while, when it managed to reach the door separating it from Brendan's files, it quickly hacked into it and entered. The actual accounts were different from the corridors; they still had the same blue backgrounds and white decors, but with a different shape. The rooms were basically gigantic cubes, filled with holograms of pictures of Pokémon that trainers had caught, representing their files. The more Pokémon a trainer had stored, the bigger the room. Brendan's room was exceptionally big, as he had caught more than 300 Pokémon.

It only took Porygon half a second to scan the entire place and figure out which file was Groudon's, and soon after doing so, it quickly floated toward it. Groudon's hologram was the biggest out of all of them, and under it was a small Pokéball projecting the hologram from the top. This was the file, and as Porygon was about to grab it, a large yellow beam shot between it and the file. The datum Pokémon turned around and saw, at the entrance to the room, another Porygon! Porygon 2, to be exact.

The datum Pokémon dashed toward it at full speed as the other was recuperating from its Hyper Beam, and rammed into it. Porygon 2 was hurled back but quickly regained itself and tried ramming into Lanette's Porygon, who managed to evade the attack. The evil Porygon then continued with a well-aimed Tri-Attack, which connected. The two continued their battle, continuously trying to ram into each other and evading each other's attacks.

Lanette was watching this through her computer screen, and even though she couldn't speak to Porygon directly, she uttered:

"Don't waste any time, Database... just get a hold of the file and exit the area…"

"What?" Brendan asked. "Does he have the file?"

"He's close, but he was attacked by another Porygon."

"Another?"

"How in the world did Deoxys acquire a Porygon? Do not fret, Brendan, Database has never failed before, and he will not here."

"I sincerely hope he won't."

"Oh! What have we here?"

"What?"

"Could it be that… yes! Porygon has acquired the file."

"Great! Get him out!"

"That would be something easier said than done."

With the file between its hands, Porygon rushed toward the exit. Not from where it came in, but out an even smaller corridor that led to the transportation machine that is used to trade poké balls back and forth from the storage system to the real world. Unfortunately, seconds before he entered the tunnel, he was directly hit by a well-aimed Tri-Attack and was frozen solid.

"No!" Lanette screamed, losing her cool and clutching her computer monitor.

"Lanette!" came the shrill, telephonic voice out from the Pokénav. "What happened?"

"Come on, Database…" she said, her hands still tightly glued to her monitor as she stared carefully at the data on-screen. "Unfreeze... Unfreeze!"

"He's frozen? Unfreeze him! Now!"

"Brendan, do you know that part of holding oneself together includes lowering one's voice? You haven't respected this criterion at all since you called me."

"I don't intend to keep myself together since I'm about to be robbed and a very powerful force may be unleashed in this region!" Brendan's hands were shaking as he yelled into the Pokénav. "Do something!"

"I am! And it is very insulting that you speak to me in such a demanding tone."

"I can't stop when the stakes are so-"

"Shut up!" shrieked Lanette, frankly tired of the bickering. It worked, apparently, and from that moment on, the Pokénav stayed completely silent.

Groudon's datum was directly in front of the frozen Porygon (he had dropped it when he was struck), and he tried as much as he could to move a single inch, yet he was incapable. Meanwhile, Porygon 2 was rushing toward him, and time was running out.

"Porygon, I beg of you…" Lanette pleaded. "You can't let him acquire that file…"

Time was running quite short. There were less than a few seconds left, and Porygon tried to break free of his frozen condition with all of his (digital) might, and… before he knew it, it worked! He managed to unfreeze, and snatched the file, flying out of the tunnel at full speed. Although Porygon 2 didn't catch him, he instantly followed him and was getting exceedingly close in his chase.

"Yes!" said Lanette. As she took a dark-hued disc out of its box and slipped it into her computer. She then proceeded to open up the program that was inside, which was a very powerful firewall that she intended to activate as soon as Porygon and the file would come back, trapping Porygon 2 inside the corridor.

Seconds after, a bright light shone in the storage system's output (the mechanism that materialized poké balls that were withdrawn from a box) and Porygon flew out, holding a poké ball. Lanette quickly activated the firewall, pressing the keys on her keyboard furiously, thereby trapping Porygon 2 in the corridor (which she told herself she would free later).

Relieved, she sat down on her chair and closed her eyes. However, her Porygon was too excited about his file rescue and went up to her, holding his pokéball and uttered: "Porygon!" with a cheerful face. Lanette smiled softly as she took it from his hands and uttered:

"Acquired. Brendan, you have no more need to worry."

The minute she said that, her door was opened abruptly, letting the bright daylight pierce through her room. At the door was, of course, Brendan, his Pokénav on his ear and a smile on his face.

"Thanks." he said, into it, before hanging up. His heartbeat slowed down significantly and his nerves eased up. Relief filled his mind; he could relax.

Quite suddenly, another flash of light shone in the output receiver, and out came another Pokémon! Quite a strange one at that. Brendan and Lanette were flabbergasted at seeing this, and subsequently taken aback.

The Pokémon looked like Porygon. That is to say, it had the same basic colors and structure, but was quite deformed. It had a long, twisted and stretched body in the shape of an upside-down 'L', and its mouth was pointed, making it look something like a beak. Furthermore, its arms were literally separated from its body and were floating next to it. It was, simply put, a grotesque form of Porygon. Even standing still, it moved erratically, and constantly looked on edge. Its eyes were simply two swirls, giving it the impression that it was constantly dizzy.

"W-What is that?" Asked Brendan.

Lanette took a few seconds to answer, as she was simply in awe of what was in front of her.

"I-I don't-"

Suddenly, the tip of the Pokémon's mouth began shining and making a high-pitched noise. It was aiming at Lanette's Porygon. As it spoke, it could be heard that its speech was as twisted and erratic as its appearance:

"P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-RYGON!" it cried, right before shooting a thin, clear, yellow beam towards Porygon. Its voice sounded like that of a computer, a glitchy one.

Porygon evaded the beam and it hit the top of the doorway, where Brendan was standing. Brendan immediately ducked as he shrieked and put his hands on his head as the beam hit. "What is that!" he yelled, on his knees, to Lanette.

"I-I-I do not know…" repeated Lanette, still staring at the thing as it chased around her Porygon and kept shooting at it. Her room was getting quite chaotic, more so than usual. Books and papers and pens and pencils were flying everywhere around them. "I don't even know how he got out. I inputted a firewall to trap him in the system…" she said, as she rummaged through her CDs to find the box.

"P-P-P-P-P-P-P-OOOOOOOOOOOO-RRR-YYYY-G-G-G-GON!"

A beam was shot directly above her head, and she shrieked as she dropped to the ground. On the floor, she saw the box that had contained her inputted firewall CD. She yanked it, and saw that it wasn't the right box at all. It was a completely white case with the letters 'D.D.' written on it. Realizing her mistake, she cried out:

"It isn't the right one! Argh! How could I have been so foolish?"

Brendan had made his way up to her by crawling on all fours and covering his head, stopping in fear every time he heard a beam pass by. The two were now next to each other, flat on the floor, and scared out of their wits.

"You know," Brendan said. "I'm no technical genius, but that Porygon looks like it hasn't been upgraded with the latest firmware."

"Brendan, has anyone ever mentioned to you that you are quite gifted in the art of being severely annoying?"

"I've heard it once or twice, yes."

"P-P-P-P-P-OOOO-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-Y-Y-Y-GON!"

Another shot was fired nearby, and a bunch of books and papers fell down near the two heroes. When the tumble was over, they took their hands off of their heads and continued speaking as the two digital Pokémon continued battling each other:

"I took the wrong box, Brendan," said Lanette. "and for that I apologize enormously, but now we must focus on getting that... that thing contained."

"Why not just catch it?"

"It's much too erratic, I'm not even sure it wouldn't program its own poké ball to lock itself in, or something of the such."

"Well, then paralyze it and turn it into data, or whatever."

"Yes! Paralysis. That should work. Database!" she yelled out above her, still on the floor. "Zap Cannon!"

"Porygon!" the datum Pokémon affirmed. A loud, crackling sound was heard as he charged up his Zap Cannon. However, the glitched Porygon tried to keep him from shooting.

"POR-R-R-YGONNNNNN!"

"Evade it, Porygon!" yelled Lanette. "Whatever it may be, evade it!" A loud shot was heard, and it wasn't from Porygon's Zap Canon. Brendan and Lanette flinched as the beam passed right above them and they both prepared for the worst. A loud "BOOOM" filled the room. The house shook.

_KKKZZZRAP!_

The Zap Canon was fired in retaliation, and it made a direct hit.

"P-P-PPOOOO-" The rival Porygon was interrupted.

The two looked at each other, wondering if what they hoped would happen had actually happened. Slowly, Lanette lifted her head from under her piles of books and paper, and what she saw made her sigh with relief. The grotesque Porygon was paralyzed. Not only was he moving slowly, but at times he simply couldn't make a move.

"Database, finish it off." she said, and her Pokémon heeded her orders as he rushed into the enemy a few times. It only took a couple of hits before it fell to the ground, looking even more confused than it usually did.

Lanette slowly and cautiously walked up to it as Brendan stayed behind with his head peaked out to see what was going on. When she came in close proximity, she took out a fairly large, mechanical device from her pocket and pointed it toward the glitched Porygon. It looked like a large, black cell phone except it had no screen, only three buttons: one red, one blue, and one purple, along with a keypad with several dozen buttons on the other side of it. She pressed the red button, and the Pokémon started to shine, it shone and it shone until it soon became completely white. Then, bit by bit, it dematerialized as it entered into the device that Lanette was holding. In a matter of seconds, it was completely gone, and Lanette pressed a few buttons on her keypad, assuring that it wouldn't get out.

"What's that?" Brendan naturally asked, as he slowly got up from off the floor.

"A device that a colleague and I invented for Porygons." she answered. "It easily transfers them from their digital form into material beings. It looks like this one is no exception."

Brendan sighed with relief. "Well, thank goodness that that's over with." he said. "Thanks, Lanette, I owe you one."

"Don't thank me," she answered. "Thank Database."

"Porygon!" said the pokémon, in a happy tone. The boy chuckled.

"Sorry I doubted you. You must've been as on edge as I was."

"Indeed. By the way, before I forget..." Lanette went over to where Brendan was standing, and rummaged through her papers on the floor before finding a large Master ball. She got back up and handed it to Brendan.

"Your Groudon."

"Oh, yeah!" he said, realizing he had completely forgotten about it in all of the chaos that was going on. "Thank you so, so much."

As she gave it to him, Brendan felt it to be very heavy on his hand. Not because it was literally heavy (no more so than any other poké ball), but because of the heavy burden with which he was going to have to be in charge as he would bear it.

"Be very careful with it." said Lanette gravely.

"You don't have to tell me. Thanks again, though. I can't tell you how grateful I am."

"Think nothing of it, just keep it away from Deoxys. For your and others' sake."

"What are you going to do now?"

"I will be staying here and see what information I can gather about this piece of datum." she said, holding up her Porygon gadget.

"Alright then, good luck with that, and tell me whatever you find out." Brendan said, before taking out his Pokénav to call May. He noticed, before he started dialling, that he had three missed calls.

"Huh," he said to himself, as he waited for an answer on the other side. "That's weird."

"Hello?" May answered.

"Hey, May. It's me."

"Brendan?"

"… Yeah. That's the second time today."

During this time, Lanette was scanning the file of the glitched Porygon she just downloaded.

"Where have you been? I've tried calling you three times!"

"I was kind of in the middle of a Pokémon battle, what happened?"

"You tell me what happened, first. Do you have the ball?"

"Oh! Yeah, I got everything. There were a few complications, but everything turned out fine. I'm holding it in my hands right now."

"Great!"

"Yeah, for now. How about you?"

"Well, for starters, Deoxys came out of the PokéCenter, surprise, surprise."

"Really? When?"

"Not long after you left."

"What?" Brendan said, in a shocked tone. He wasn't quite expecting that answer, it meant that Deoxys had left soon after sending his Porygon 2 into the storage system.

"As I was explaining our entire situation to the guys, the doors of the PokéCenter suddenly opened, without explanation. After all of the trapped citizens got out, Deoxys came."

"What did you do?"

"He didn't look like he wanted to go anywhere, so we tried to subdue him, but we didn't last very long."

"Then what?"

"Well... He came after me."

"What?"

"He approached me, and I tried backing away but I tripped and fell to the ground and then... well, he left.

"Left? He never seems to want to have anything to do with you. What's with him?"

"I think I should count my blessings... anyway, after that, he went to Brawly and the others and scanned them all. Skarmory came right after, and even though he had a resistance to Psychic attacks, he didn't last long."

"So, everyone else got a taste of it then."

"Yeah, and, well I'm not sure you'll like it."

"Try me."

"They apparently got flashes of moments that happened minutes ago, like you had. and the most vivid of them was talking to you on the phone before you went to Lanette's."

"Hmm. I guess he wants everybody's opinion then. It's still very strange why he doesn't go to you though... maybe it's because you're a girl."

"Um... I guess that could always be a factor." May replied, somewhat sceptical.

"In any case, let's just meet up and gather somewhere, alright? This will be easier to deal with if we're all face to face. Did you call our fathers?"

"Yeah, they still haven't found Regirock, so they've decided to instead go get help from Professor Cozmo."

"The meteorologist?"

"... meteoriticist." May corrected. "They're going to see if he can help our case in any way by studying the fallen meteor."

"Is it still in the desert?"

"No, but your father apparently snagged a piece before leaving the Research Center."

"Really? Alright, dad. That's not like him at all, not that that's a bad thing."

"What can I say? Anyway, I'm on Skarmory right now, on my way to Fallarbour to meet up with them, and they told me to tell you to come as well."

"What about Registeel?"

"The police already have that covered. Besides, where there's Registeel, there will most likely be Deoxys, and I don't want you anywhere near him. Especially not with what you have now."

"…"

"Do you hear me?"

"Yeah, yeah." Brendan said, in a rather annoyed tone. "Gosh, you sound just like my mother."

"I'll meet you there. Hurry up and be careful."

"I will. See you."

As Brendan hung up, he heard Lanette utter a 'Hm.'

"Hm?" he replied.

"What?" Lanette said, turning her head from her monitor toward him. "Oh, it's nothing, just that… um… well…"

"Something wrong?"

"No, it just seems to be that... ahem, well, upon inspection of this 'maverick' Porygon it would appear that he is, uh... not really who we thought him to be."

"Meaning he was what?" Brendan asked, in an increasingly concerned tone.

"Well… uh… you see, every Pokémon Center's storage system is inputted with an antivirus software which consists of a single Porygon 2. It is programmed to activate only when the system is in emergency shut down, to hunt down any unknown agents that are present after a brief scan of every trainer's account."

"You mean… that Porygon 2 wasn't Deoxys's?" he deduced.

"Put simply: no."

"But you said it went directly to my account!"

"Yes, well, the amusing thing about that is that it is programmed to first search the account of trainers with the most Pokémon in them, and since you have the most Pokémon in Hoenn then…"

"What? You mean it never meant to steal any of my files?"

"No, the only reason it attacked my Porygon was because it thought that he was stealing your Groudon, which it turns out... he was. Heh, heh."

"I can't believe this! You mean Groudon could be safe in the storage system right now! All of this, and what's most likely going to come, could've been avoided? How come you didn't know of this Porygon 2 antivrus software?"

"The Nurses asked me permission for that software an eternity ago, it had completely slipped my mind. I'm very, very, deeply sorry about all of this Brendan. It seems that I caused you much trouble today, and all for nothing."

Brendan looked at her with gravitas at first, but eventually, her conceded. "Ah, Don't worry about it…" he said eventually, waving his hand. "You just did what I asked you and did what you could based on your own judgement. No one can fault you for that."

"Why not leave the ball here. You could trick Deoxys into thinking that you have it while we think of something more adequate."

"I don't want to put you in any trouble, this is my burden. In any case, it would be that I don't tell you anything more. Deoxys has a way of acquiring information easily..."

"Oh?"

"It's... It's a bit difficult to explain but..." Brendan stopped. He had just come across something in his mind that was quite strange.

"Brendan?" Lanette asked, seeing him in what looked like a daze.

"Lanette..." Brendan replied, looking at her with an intrigued expression. "When I called, I never told you about Deoxys... but you already knew who he was and what his name was..."

Lanette's eyes suddenly grew wide. "I..." she uttered. "I did... didn't I?"

"What's that about?" he asked, putting his hands on his hips. "I mean, we just saw him today, and I've heard no mention of him before that... do you know something that no one else does?"

Lanette looked at him for a few seconds, not sure what to answer. Eventually, she sighed and lowered her head. "Brendan, I'll be honest with you:" she said, as she lifted her head back up toward him. "Deoxys is not anything new..." Brendan's ears perked up upon hearing this. "He's been on earth for a few days... since the meteor landed."

The boy's eyes widened; this was tremendous news for him. "W-What?" he asked. "How do you know this?"

"I work part-time as a communications analyst for Mossdeep. And I noticed, though they seem to ignore it, that the meteor that came a few days ago housed Deoxys."

"Of course! It landed in the desert, right? That's when he went to wake up Regirock!"

"Indeed. Mossdeep apparently wants to keep things under wraps. I'm sorry for not having told you before..."

"That's fine. I just hope this isn't going to get you in trouble with them."

"Don't fret. I'm just a regular employee, I've never even dealt with any of the actual heads of the Research Center. I'm too unimportant for any of them to notice anything that I said to anybody. Besides, anything I tell you can't really compromise them."

"Yeah... This is just a bit puzzling though. If they know this much about him, they must be more deeply tied into all of this than I originally thought..."

"Well, in any case, I think you'd better be going. I'll keep you up to date on anything else that goes on."

"Sure. And thanks again."

"It is my pleasure."

Wll, bye then, so long Porygon! Thanks for your help. Sorry about all the trouble"

"Pory!" replied the Pokémon, gleefully.

Brendan carefully walked out of Lanette's house, making sure not to step on any CDs or papers, and made his way out the door, giving one last wave goodbye before stepping out, where his Charizard was waiting for him. He hopped on top of the orange dragon.

"Well, Charizard." he said. "It's off to Fallarbour Town from here."

Charizard let out an obeying growl and started flapping hiss wings, gaining a bit of altitude. He stayed in place as he turned around, and as he started flying, Brendan halted him.

"Wait a second." he said. Charizard obeyed and dropped back down. "The town isn't very far, let me just walk there." So, he got off of his Charizard, withdrew him, and started up the path of route 114, past the wooden bridge on the water, and into the dull, brown environment near Fallarbor, where the ash was abundant.

* * *

During Brendan's time with Lanette, Professor Birch and Norman were trying to find Regirock and see if they could learn anything more from it and these series of events. What they really wanted though, was a piece of it to compare with the piece of meteorite that fell on that fateful day (yesterday) to see if they were the same. Their results were less than fruitful.

Right before Brendan had arrived at Lanette's, they were approaching Fallarbor town via Route 113. The sun was just about setting in the west, and it left a very nice auburn coloring in the sky. The road itself was of a greyish colour due to the large amount of volcanic ash that fell there, but the sunset projected a relaxing golden tint onto the route. They had to put the top on the car since the wheels were kicking up an enormous amount of dust and ash.

"Let's hope that Cozmo can clear a few things up for us." said Norman, as he drove through the ash-filled road, keenly concentrated on what was in front of him. "Are you sure he's reliable?"

"Professor Cozmo and I have known each other since college," replied professor Birch. "He's an expert on anything Meteoritic. I assure you, he'll be able to give more of a direct answer than anyone at the Research Center."

"I've been meaning to ask, Harry, what do _you _think about all this?"

"About everything?"

"Pretty much."

"Quite strange. Everything is happening so fast, I'm not sure what to make of it all. It seems obvious that Deoxys came from the meteorite, but how is he awakening all of the Regis? Furthermore, what does he want from them? What does he want at all? If I were to give my own opinion on this, I'd say that the Regis and Deoxys are of the same origin."

"It looks like we have more questions than answers in all of this."

"Indeed."

The two men stayed silent for the rest of the travel, contemplating to themselves what could actually be going on as they looked out at the grey landscape. Eventually, they made their way to Fallarbour. The town was particularly quiet (more so than Dewford was at that time), and a few people were out here and there, tending to their daily needs.

They stopped in front of Professor Cozmo's house and knocked. There was no answer. They tried once more and still no answer. At the third try, with still no response, they jiggled the knob slowly to see if the door could open. It was unlocked. Slowly, they turned it and opened the door, peering in as subtly as they could to see why in the world the professor was not answering.

There was no specific reason, though. The meteoriticist was inside, on his desk, looking at something through a microscope, and he was quite steeped in his research. His desk, and even his entire house, was noticeably clean, much more so than Professor Birch's. He hadn't noticed the two entering, and so they weren't sure whether they should disturb him or not.

"What do we do?" whispered Norman to Harold.

"What do you think we do?" the professor whispered back. As he moved forward to speak, Norman pulled him back.

"We can't disturb him." he said. "What if he's on the verge of a breakthrough?"

"Nonsense, what could he be viewing through a microscope that's so important?"

"If he didn't, wouldn't he have noticed us by now?"

"He's probably just someone who gets very concentrated in their research, like me."

"You think?"

"Could I help you gentlemen, perhaps?" asked professor Cozmo, still looking through his microscope.

Norman and Harold exchanged glances before Professor Birch responded:

"Yes... Yes, you can. We would need your help solving the current situation that has grasped our region."

"Also, why is your door unlocked?" Norman asked.

"You're referring to the entire meteor fiasco?" asked Cozmo, lifting up his head. Professor Cozmo was a young man, but he had the air of an old scientist about him. His short brown hair was messy and in his face, and although his eyes, behind his wide spectacles, always seemed tired, his voice showed that he was wide awake. He was wearing neat clothes and always had a white lab coat covering himself at all times.

"Yes, I'm sure you've already looked into it?" Professor Birch asked.

"Not really. The entire impact site was so heavily guarded that I didn't even dare to go check it out. I decided to leave it to those snooty Mossdeep researchers."

"Ugh, I was over there for half the day and they didn't find _anything_."

"Nothing?"

"Well, nothing that they told me. Honestly, I have the feeling like they don't quite respect me there."

"I know exactly how you feel, Professor. I've been over there a few of times and they've disregarded every single one of my theories pertaining to meteoritic activity. After a few months, they not only accept them as valid theories, but they actually take credit for them. 'Never again!' I say. Let them come to their own half-baked conclusions."

"I couldn't agree more. Did you ever notice that when you're over there, they always-"

"Uh… guys?" Norman interrupted. "It's fun and all to complain about snooty scientists but I believe we have a few important things to talk about."

"Ah, yes, quite right Norman." replied Birch.

"Yes, quite right." added the other scientist.

"Professor Cozmo, what do you know about the current situation up until now?"

"Only what the news is telling me. The sightings of Regirock, Regice and the strange alien that accompanied him in Dewford."

"Were you aware that Regirock had disappeared?"

"What do you mean? You can't find him?"

"No. He's dropped out of sight."

"I guess that would be strange, but it's nothing to research, he's probably hiding in the mountains or something like that."

"You would think that, but you see-"

Professor Birch was interrupted yet again by a knock on the door. Professor Cozmo got up this time to let May and Brendan in.

"May!" Professor Birch exclaimed.

"Brendan!" cried Norman. "You guys made it. You know, the door was unlocked."

"Yeah, after all that we've been through, we've managed to make it here in one piece." said Brendan.

"We met each other just now," May added. "as I landed I saw Brendan walking up to the house. Isn't that a funny coincidence?"

"I suppose…" said Professor Cozmo.

"My son and May have had the opportunity to see Regice and Deoxys up close." said Professor Birch to Professor Cozmo, braggingly.

"Really? That's quite something. How did you manage to do that? And who's Deoxys?"

"It wasn't very hard." said May. "We already knew were Regice was, and since Regirock had been awakened, we figured either him or Registeel would be awoken next, and it turns out we were right."

"We even fought with Deoxys." said Brendan. "He's the alien that we spotted who woke up the Regis. He escaped as we were about to win, though. He even managed-"

"T-To steal our poké balls." May interrupted tersely.

"Poké balls?" asked Norman, understandably intrigued. "May are you putting us on?"

"This is no time to be joking, young lady." said Professor Birch.

Brendan looked at May very strangely and was about to correct her, until he saw her give him a very subtle wink. Trusting her, he didn't say a word and let her continue her plan.

"Uh… I-I guess we should explain things more clearly." May said. "Let's start from the beginning: when he had gone to the Island Cave, we came there just in time to see Deoxys wake up Regice. We were chased out, and it was there that Deoxys literally tried to take our poké balls from out of our bag."

"He had managed to take our bags off of us first." said Brendan, playing along with May's strange game. "Of course we tried to stop him but he uh... overpowered us…"

"He engaged in physical contact?" asked Professor Birch. "That's completely inappropriate behaviour for a Pokémon that has just met somebody…"

"Well, I guess he felt threatened." May replied.

"After a quick spar with him, Charizard and Blastoise he changed into a weird form and left on an ice path that Regice had created all the way to Dewford."

"Now, though, he probably went to wake up Registeel to complete his three-man 'army'."

The three men had a lot of information to take in. After a few seconds of thought, Professor Birch started his hypothesis. "So... he woke up the Regis."

"Which most likely means that he can control them." Norman continued.

"How is that possible?" asked Professor Cozmo. "He isn't even from here."

"Perhaps the Regis are not from here either." said Professor Birch. "No one knew where they came from. Could it be possible that they're from the same place from which Deoxys comes?"

"Moreover, what does he want?"

"That's a good question. It's the one that precedes all others, yet it doesn't seem clear at all.…" After a few moments of contemplating, the Pokémon professor reached into his pocket and took out a piece of brown meteor. It looked like a regular rock, and it shone brightly due to the various alien minerals inside of it. As he handed it over to Professor Cozmo he said. "Here you go, professor. See if you can maybe find something interesting out of this. It's a piece of the meteor that fell yesterday night."

Professor Cozmo held it up into the light and examined it. "Hmm…" he said. "It definitely is extraterrestrial. Perhaps it can help us shed some light on this Deoxys fellow."

"Uh…" Brendan said, wanting to correct him.

"Would it help if we brought a piece of Regirock, too?" Asked May.

"Regirock isn't a meteor." replied Brendan.

"I know that," May answered, as she scowled at him. "but it might shed some light on a few things if we compare his material to a meteor, wouldn't it? Plus, his structure is similar to that of a meteor."

"It couldn't hurt." replied the meteoriticist. "Wait. Actually, now that I think of it, it would be essential. Yes, I'd like you to do it."

"Alright…"

Their conversation was interrupted suddenly, as May received a call on her Pokénav. She took it out and looked at the caller ID. "It's officer Richards." she said.

"You have the Pokénav number of a police officer?" asked Brendan.

"He's the one I met in Dewford. I gave him my number to tell me whatever would come up with Registeel." she told him, as she answered the Pokénav.

During her conversation, the three adult men continued speaking amongst themselves. Brendan however, slipped off toward May to listen to her conversation, and (he hoped) talk to her about their small fib. Unfortunately, as he approached, May brushed him off and continued speaking.

"Uh-huh…" she said. "Yes...yes. What? How many were you? Wow... this seems to be getting serious. Where is he headed now? Alright, we're on our way." As she hung up, Brendan was about to speak to her but she ignored him and spoke out loud to the others: "Deoxys just woke up Registeel."

"Hmm." uttered Professor Birch. "So, it is done. The third one has awoken. What of the police squad?"

"They couldn't hold them down. Deoxys apparently managed to defeat all of their Pokémon."

"We're not dealing with anything ordinary here, it seems." Norman added. "Where is he headed?"

"West, from the Ancient Tomb. They're going to try to track it down. What should we do?"

"Meeting up with them sounds like the best thing we can do. The more we are, the more of a chance we have against it."

"You think we'll need to use brute force against it?" asked Professor Birch, concerned.

"If it won't hesitate to use it on us, we need to be prepared. Are you two ready?"

"Yes." May replied, with a glimmer in her eyes. Her voice trembled slightly, but Norman knew that she was strong.

"Sure." Brendan replied soon after, more relaxed than May was, yet still serious about the situation.

"Alright then, let's go. Me and Harry will take the car, you two will want to take your Pokémon I assume?"

"Norman, that would be Harry and _I_." corrected the professor.

"Let's just go." Norman replied, annoyed. "Tell us whatever you find out Professor Cozmo."

"I will!" replied the meteoriticist, before turning around to look back into his microscope.

The four heroes proceeded out the door and to their methods of transportation. The sky had turned black at this time, night had befallen Hoenn. Professor Birch and Norman hopped into their car, but before Brendan and May hopped on their Pokémon, Brendan grabbed May by the arm and stopped her. "Do you mind telling me what that was all about?" he asked, as he pulled her to him.

"What? Oh, the lie!" she exclaimed, as she gently took his hand off of her arm. "I figured you would've known why I did that."

"I clearly don't, so enlighten me, will you?"

"Every person we tell about Groudon is just another vessel from which Deoxys can get his information. As soon as we even mention his name in front of other people, the memories are already there for the taking."

"Oh…" said Brendan, instantly realizing what she was saying. "That is a very good reason, then."

"The less people we tell about Groudon the better. I already made the mistake of talking about it to Brawly and the inspector and policeman. They won't tell anyone but they have to be very careful in not being caught by him. As must we."

"Lanette knows too..."

"What's done is done. Now, we just have to focus on containing Deoxys and figuring out what he wants, whatever that may be."

"Yeah... I should also tell you that Deoxys didn't in fact try to steal Groudon, but that the agent in the system was only an antivirus."

"What? He never sent anything in the storage system?"

"Nope."

"Really? So then... do you have him?"

"Yeah... I couldn't put him back in the storage system since it's all... shut down."

"I see..."

"Also, there's something that Lanette told me that was pretty telling."

"What was it?"

"Deoxys came from the meteor yesterday night. He's an alien from space."

"Really? How does she know that?"

"She works for Mossdeep part-time, or something... Anyway, I'm just telling you because it's supposed to be very confidential."

"It makes sense, but then how come he already has a Pokédex entry?"

"I don't know..."

Suddenly, the two were frightened by a loud honking sound. They turned their heads in disdain to see their fathers waving at them.

"Come on!" yelled Norman. "We can't waste any time. Hop on and let's get a move on!"

"Yeah, yeah!" Brendan yelled back, as he climbed atop his Charizard's back. May did the same with Skarmory and after a few flap of their wings, the two Pokémon were carrying their trainers in the night air toward the ashy distance of route 113, where the two men had come in.


	6. Chapter 5: Peril at Mount Chimney

Hey guys, thanks for those sticking with me, but I'm back after a really long hiatus. I hope you haven't forgotten about me yet, lol. I have quite a bit more chapters to submit and if this story continues to get a favourable response, I'll be glad to keep writing. I really appreciate the reviews and I take every one of them into consideration. Thanks for the support. :D

Chapter 5

**Peril at Mount Chimney**

It was night time. The moon was shining brightly in the sky, and several stars were dotted around it, illuminating Mt. Chimney. Our heroes were descending the mountain, hoping to descend it all the way down to route 111 and head to Mauville city. From there, they would head east and hope to encounter Deoxys and the newly awoken Registeel.

The mountain was enormous. It towered on both sides of route 111 (the desert landscape) and route 112, which was adjacent to Lavaridge town (located conveniently beneath the volcanic mountain). The four heroes were on the side of the mountain, the fathers, Norman and Professor Birch were riding on a craggy road right next to the rocky wall in Norman's convertible. The road wasn't very ideal for cars, but it was faster that way. (Besides, there was a metal fencing on the cliff side to prevent any car from falling) Normally, the mountain was a maroon-ish red while the road itself was more of a bright orange. However, during night time, no one could really spot any colours. Below them (that is to say, below the cliff they were driving next to), at that particular moment, was route 112. If they looked beyond the cliff, they could see the small and cozy Verdanturf town, and even further beyond they could see a bit of Rustboro city, with a very large forest of trees separating it from them.

May and Brendan were on their Pokémon, flying above their fathers' car. They could have left directly toward their destination, but thought it better if they would stick together this time, as they might have more of a fighting chance. It was quite dark, but the stars and the moon and the lights from the car was more than enough for them to see what was going on around them.

The side of the mountain was very craggy and jagged, as if all of it were eroded, or at least, was in the process of eroding. The road was rough as well, and the two men met up with many a large bump on it. That didn't stop them though, they continued on knowing that this way was shorter than any other. Since they were descending the mountain, the road was spiralling down the mountain, always hugging the side of it.

"Say Harry," Norman said to him, as he was driving. He was holding the steering wheel with one hand only and was resting the other one on his seat. "What do you think is going on between May and your boy?"

"I beg your pardon?" asked Professor Birch, not quite sure what to make of that question.

"You know what I mean." Norman replied teasingly. "Come on, since the day they met they've always gone through everything together. The Pokémon League, the Team Aqua and Magma threat, the legendary Pokémon battle. After that, they never separated once for anything. They do everything together."

"Ugh… Norman, we've been over this before."

"No, we haven't. You always brush it off but I think you're just denying what's there."

"Denying what? Three years and still, nothing has happened, and I don't think anything ever will."

"You don't think it's May, do you?"

"What? Of course not, May's a very fine young lady, and she knows quite well what she wants. No, if this is anyone's fault it's Brendan's."

"May can be a bit pushy sometimes...well, actually she can be very pushy. I can understand how that can be a bit of a turn off."

"Believe me, Brendan's completely oblivious to everything that happens around him. And I hate to say it but he can be a tad self-centered at times. Look, it's obvious to me that those two aren't quite good for that sort of thing, and I'm sure they've thought of it themselves as well."

"Really? You think they talked about it between themselves?"

"Have we ever talked about it with them?"

"I know I haven't."

"Neither have I."

A brief silence filled the car at that point, and all that the two heard was the running of the engine and the wind.

"You know," Professor Birch started again. "I'm not sure we understand our children as much as we would like."

Norman didn't respond, he was looking out his side of the windshield to the mountainside ahead. "Hm? Oh, I'm sorry, I was looking at the mountainside. Something weird caught my attention."

"Look at the road instead." the professor muttered coldly, as he looked out his own window.

* * *

During this time, May and Brendan were speaking amongst themselves as they flew, about entirely different things. The wind was colder than usual as it was night, (they didn't really notice it anyway), making a low whistling sound as it passed. Their hair and clothes were swirling in said wind.

"Huh." Brendan said, looking at the moon. "It's a nice night, tonight."

"Yeah," May replied. "I rarely get to see a full moon. It's so huge tonight, too."

"The air is really fresh, too." said Brendan, after taking a deep breath. "I hardly every notice it when I'm flying, I'm usually too busy thinking about something else."

"Rarely do we notice the nice little things when we're busy."

"Yeah…" after saying this, Brendan took a brief pause before saying "hey May, I have something to ask."

"What is it?" May asked, slightly nervous from Brendan's tone.

"Did you ever think of leaving Hoenn?"

"Leaving?" she asked, slightly relieved. "Uh...I thought about it a few times, and well...yes, I expected to leave at one point, but not for good."

"Where would you like to go?"

"Sinnoh's always seemed nice to me, and as soon as I have enough money, I'm going to plan a trip there."

"Sinnoh...that's pretty far. What do you intend to do there?"

"I want to become a gym leader."

"What? Really?" Brendan asked obnoxiously

"Yes, what's wrong with that?" May replied defensively.

"Nothing, it's just… well, it seems like kind of a big goal."

"You think? Well, to tell you the truth...when I heard that they were building a new gym in one of the towns… I sent my application."

"Wow! May, you really want that job don't you? How come I never heard you mention that you wanted to be a gym leader before?"

"Uh...I have mentioned it a few times before."

"You have?"

"Yeah, you don't remember?"

"Well… uh… now that you mention it I… well, uh… no."

"Oh...well, that's ok. It sometimes happens to me too that I miss a few things that other people say."

Brendan felt like a jerk. It happened more often than not that he didn't pay attention to what people were saying, and it was particularly bad for him when they themselves pointed it out. He felt especially bad at this point since he believed he was acting the same way he always accused his father of acting. He sighed.

"Listen May," he started. "I-"

"WATCH OUT!" May shrieked.

The side of the mountain moved. A few small and medium-sized rocks came tumbling down a few feet ahead of them and of the car. Around that area, they could perceive an odd rock formation protruding out of the mountain wall. Of course, it was night time, so until this very moment, they mistook that formation to be an actual part of the mountain.

It was, however, Regirock. It burst forth from the mountainside, detaching itself from the mountains and letting out its cry (it was particularly loud, and echoed through the mountain) as it immediately swung its arm toward Brendan and May, who were heading directly toward it. Pieces of rock continued streaming down the mountain as it had done so.

Immediately, the two Pokémon dodged the attack. Brendan dodged above it, and May below. Its gigantic rock arm hit the mountain side, creating a massive shockwave and allowing several more rocks to crumble down it. Norman had performed a manoeuvre and swerved around Regirock's leg to avoid it, and continued off into the distance.

As soon as Brendan had avoided the behemoth's rock arm, it attacked a second time, using its second arm. With it, he gave Charizard a hard jab, thrusting its arm forward, which could not be avoided. All Charizard could do was place himself upward to protect Brendan, but when he was hit, he flew a good distance away and Brendan was knocked off of him crying out in pain.

The twenty-one-year-old trainer was in serious danger. He was quickly falling from a 20 foot drop. "Brendan!" May cried out, amidst the commotion, "Skarmory. Turn!" And heeding its trainers orders, the Pokémon swerved very quickly and manoeuvred his way under Regirock's arm directly toward Brendan. Seconds before he hit the ground, May grabbed Brendan's hand and Skarmory turned sharply once more, away from Regirock. Brendan was pulled up onto Skarmory behind May. "Thanks May!" He said, gratefully. "I'd have been done for."

"Don't thank me yet!" May said. She was right. Regirock was staring at them, preparing its next attack, whatever it may be. The two heroes both took out one of their poké balls and enlarged it. "Who are you going to send?" Brendan asked.

"Who do you think?" May replied. "We need something that Regirock is weak against."

As Skarmory flew back toward Regirock, the behemoth was getting ready to swing its arm once more. Suddenly though, a large explosion of fire appeared on its face, distracting it from attacking (although it didn't look like it did much damage). Charizard was then seen flying toward it, preparing another flame attack in his mouth, and spewing it out as a Flamethrower. The attack seemed to hinder Regirock more than hurt him, and as Charizard passed by, it tried to crush him with its rock arm, but missed. Charizard took this opportunity to spit out a few more small fireballs at him.

To counterattack properly, Regirock threw its arm against the mountain wall and produced an enormous rock slide. Small to medium-sized rocks tumbled down the wall all around our heroes. Skarmory was quick and swift in evading them, but Charizard was having trouble. When he slipped up, a large rock would hit him on the back, then on the wing. This continued until a fairly large rock hit him on the head, and he fell all the way down onto the road, screaming.

"Charizard!" Brendan cried. He took out his pokéball and pressed the withdraw button but it didn't work. "We're too far! Turn back, May!" At this point, the rock slide had ended. May ordered Skarmory to make U-turn and swoop down toward the ground. The bird Pokémon heeded it's trainers ordered and flew back toward Regirock.

When they got close enough, Brendan could see Charizard on the ground, partially covered by dark orange boulders. He pointed his poké ball once more, and this time it worked. Charizard turned red and de-materialized into the red and white orb.

"Now!" May cried out to Brendan, clutching her own ball.

However, she was interrupted. Regirock had already started attacking once more. As Charizard was being withdrawn, he had started to put both of his arms in the air, pointing toward the ground. Then, as our heroes approached the ground around him, he thrust them down, producing a massive earthquake all around him. The ground near him lifted up, the boulders flew away, and the shock produced a deafening sound. Rocks and stones flew upward from all over the attack radius.

Skarmory manoeuvred through the airborne earth and made his way around it, flying back to where our heroes had been. Nevertheless, Brendan and May had time to summon both Sceptile and Blaziken respectively, who proceeded to battle Regirock.

Blaziken hopped on several parts of Regirock to reach eventually his face and kicked him there. The shock was enormous and the rock behemoth was literally taken aback.

To retaliate, it punched the ground that Blaziken had landed on, but the fire bird evaded and Sceptile twirled herself in the air, throwing several sharp blades of grass at the rock monster, that stuck into its body. After crying out in pain, it swung its arm once more toward Blaziken (who was on the ground) and hit him. It continued its swing until it hit the wall, trapping Blaziken between its arm and the mountain wall and producing another rock slide. To try and free himself, Blaziken spit several fireballs from his beak at Regirock's face and tried pummelling the part of its arm that he was trapped under (his arms were free). Sceptile, always light on her feet, swiftly dodged the rocks and reached Regirock's face in a single hop, and tried whipping it with its bushy tail. No matter how much it hurt though, Regirock did not let go of Blaziken.

As the two teenagers flew away from Regirock, they saw their fathers in Norman's car, parked not far away. They proceeded to land next to it and enter said automobile.

As she got in May ordered Skarmory to join Blaziken and Sceptile in on the battle. Upon hearing the orders, the metallic Pokémon took off to save its friend. As he entered the rock slide, he opened his wings up completely, tearing apart every piece of rock that fell through it and upon reaching Regirock, he retreated his wings and plunged directly toward it at full speed, like a missile. Hitting the rocky Pokémon's face created a massive recoil for both of them. Skarmory opened it's wings back up to keep it's altitude, and Regirock was literally pushed back (again), letting go of Blaziken who fell safely to the ground.

"Well, looks like we found him." Norman said.

"And it also looks like he wants to kill us." Brendan added. "That thing's insane."

"It's very cold here." May said, as a slight change of the subject. "I always have the chills up in the mountains."

"I don't understand this…" said Professor Birch "this is the first time I see a Pokémon actively hurting a human out of it's own free will."

"Maybe it's not acting out of it's own free will." Norman replied. "Didn't we figure that Deoxys was controlling them?"

"So it's Deoxys that wants us dead?" Brendan asked, half-jokingly.

"At first I thought it was because I was flying, but now I realize that I'm still very cold." May continued.

"This doesn't make any sense," Professor Birch said. "Why is he pursuing you two? You must have something that he wants."

"W-Whatever gives you that idea?" Brendan asked nervously.

"Is anyone else cold?" May asked.

"No, May! No one is cold! Why are even thinking about something so stupid in the middle of all this!"

"Actually, Brendan you do look pretty sweaty." Norman said. "Although not the usual 'hot' sweaty but more like a 'nervous' sweaty."

"Hold on," said Professor Birch. "I _am _cold. In fact, I'm very cold."

The group looked at each other inquisitively before slowly turning their heads behind them, expecting exactly to see what was making them so cold.

A few hundred meters in front of them stood the large behemoth of ice, Regice, waiting patiently. The ground around it was covered in a thin sheet of ice.

The group was presented with an ultimatum. On one side there was a homicidal Regirock that was fighting off three Pokémon at once, and on the other was a patient Regice seemingly waiting to turn them into crystalloid blocks.

"This is definitely not cool." Brendan said.

"Alright," Professor Birch spoke calmly and quietly, in a cold whisper, not wanting to cause any startling. "Very, very, Slowly, we're all going to sit down. Perhaps he doesn't see us."

"Uh… Dad? He's raising his arm up directly toward us. I think he sees us." Brendan was indeed correct. Regice had slowly raised his arm up toward them, charging an Ice Beam.

"Norman, without any sudden movements, slowly start moving the car toward-"

Norman floored it. The car was facing Regirock, so it quickly dashed toward it, narrowly avoiding the Ice Beam, which subsequently hit the ground and created a fairly large rock of ice behind. "Hang on tight!" Norman cried, before swerving the car violently and turning 180 degrees through drift. After a short stop, he started up again and sped up toward the behemoth of ice.

For every Ice Beam that it shot out, Norman swerved either to the right or left, narrowly avoiding them before they turned into ice stones. Needless to say, everyone was on the edge of their seat as the cold, cold wind pierced through them.

Meanwhile, the three monsters were continuing their battle with the giant one. Regirock was still down from Skarmory's Steel Peck attack, and had one rocky arm on the ground to keep himself up. Occasionally, he would try to shoo away Blaziken or Sceptile who continued attacking.

Skarmory had retreated to recover from the large recoil. Eventually, he turned back and headed toward Regirock, his wings opened up completely, shining brightly with the light of the stars and the moon. It headed directly toward the rock monster's arm and completely passed through it, cutting it jaggedly into two. The lower part fell to the ground and Regirock, having lost its footing, did the same, falling flat on its face, producing a large shock wave and the ground and a loud, crashing noise of rock. When Skarmory had emerged from it's attack, it saw Regice attacking it's trainer, and decided to act quickly. Blaziken and Sceptile followed closely behind as the weakened Regirock tumbled slowly toward the ground.

Upon seeing the steel bird, Regice lifted its other arm and shot thin blasts of ice toward him. Skarmory dodged, left, right, up, down every which way to avoid being possibly frozen. Meanwhile, on the ground, our heroes were driving toward Regice while dodging the few beams of ice it shot to them with its other arm.

Eventually, the car zoomed past all of the ice attacks and approached the ice behemoth. They were now getting dangerously close. The windshield and the windows all around the car were covered in a thick layer of frost that made it impossible to see out of them (fortunately, the car's top was open) and the air around them was getting gradually colder.

"Uh… Norman?" said Professor Birch. "You do realize that we're dangerously close to this… monster now, do you not?"

"Yeah…" Norman responded, paying more attention to what was in front of him.

"Norman, I think we should turn back." Brendan said, getting nervous as they approached.

"Harry, get out your Swampert."

"What?" replied Professor Birch.

"Kids, unbuckle your belts."

"Norman, what are you doing?"

"Just trust me, Harry. Get out your Swampert now."

Professor Birch hesitated. Holding the poké ball in his hand, he looked back toward the two children, their seatbelts having been unbuckled, holding tightly on to the sides of the car.

"Get him out now and tell him to catch Brendan and May when I stop. In case we stop too abruptly and start sliding."

"Catch Brendan and…"

"Just do it! As soon as I stop!"

"What about you?" May asked.

"We can handle ourselves!"

At that moment, Regice performed a new attack. It lifted both its arms up, charging them, and pointed them toward the ground. Very thin beams shot out from them (thinner than the usual Ice Beam) and the ground in front of him instantly became enveloped in thin a sheet of ice. All of the dirt and rocks on the mountain road were trapped under a hard white blanket. This sheet spread out everywhere in front of it, including where the car was riding at that moment. The automobile started skidding under the slippery frost and Norman partly lost control of it. As it skidded, Norman hit the brakes and drifted the car 90 degrees, having its side face Regice. It came to a screeching halt millimetres away from Regice's leg.

May and Brendan held on tightly the entire time and had their eyes shut for fear of collision. As soon as they stopped, they heard "Jump out!" and without hesitation they did so. At the same time, Professor Birch threw his poké ball out to them as he cried: "Catch them, Swampert!"

Brendan and May had jumped high and, in mid-air, directly below them, a giant red blob appeared in an ambiguous position. As they landed onto it, it had materialized into Swampert, who had his arms spread out in a way to catch both of them before they fell on the ground, and he landed on his feet and stopped, a few feet away from Regice and the car. During this entire time, Regice could not perform a sizeable attack due to Skarmory having rammed into it, giving the two kids time to jump and land into the Swamp Monster.

Regice quickly regained its senses and lifted its arm up and pointed towards the kids, in the same fashion as a firearm. As it charged up, they could notice a grey blotch inside of it, and before long, a loud thud was heard, and the behemoth was pushed forward. Fearing that it may fall on them, Norman moved out of the way with his car. He had already put it in reverse and floored it. He then put it back in drive and drove off, passing Regice, and screaming to May and Brandon: "WE'LL MEET YOU AT THE CABLE CAR!".

"Cable car?" Brendan said, inquisitively.

"The cable car is right over here!" May exclaimed, pointing in the distance. There was a cliff near them, and there was a small metal fencing barring it. Beyond that, there was a large valley separating another cliff that was on a small plateau, and on that plateau was a large building that housed the cable car. The large cable started from inside the building and made its way around the mountainside (eventually setting down at the top of Mt. Chimney). The valley in between the two cliffs was far. Too far for any person to jump across, but not so for a Pokémon. "There's no time, to lose, come on! Swampert, to the cable car, jump!"

"Whoa, hold on Ma-" Brendan said, but it was too late. The Swamp Pokémon had already started. Both teenagers were sitting on his shoulders and he was pushing his forearms against the ground as he ran as a way to gain more speed as he was running toward the cliff.

Regice shot an Ice Beam, but missed, and a large ice rock formed next to them as the Pokémon continued running. As it charged for another Ice Beam, a large fireball could be seen heading toward it. Unfortunately for Regice, it hadn't seen it and was struck. It went back a little bit. A large hole could be seen near its face, where the fireball hit it. However, it was quickly regaining its normal shape again. A few feet away Blaziken and Sceptile could be seen running toward it.

As Swampert continued, he came closer and closer to the cliff that separated them from the cable car. "Alright Swampert," May said. "Get ready to jump."

"Jump?" said Brendan. "Uh… Swampert isn't exactly made for jumping."

"We have no other choice."

"We can always, you know, follow our dads."

"They said to meet us there, so they must have some kind of plan. Going against it is only going to confuse things further. Oh, hold on!" As she said these words Swampert took its last steps before flexing its legs and bouncing off the cliff.

Our heroes were in mid-air, clutching the swamp-Pokémon's shoulders and keeping their eyes tightly shut, waiting for Swampert's feet to touch solid ground. An Ice Beam could be heard passing directly beside them and enticed them to cling even tighter. As Swampert's feet hit the ground, he skidded a few feet further before stopping completely. During this time, Regice had shot another Ice Beam and missed them just barely, due to Swampert's constant movement after landing. This meant that the Ice Beam hit the ground directly behind them, and it was also where the big rock of ice formed itself. Swampert continued running. In the distance, the battle sounds could be heard. Sounds of fire balls and ice beams and chunks of ice breaking off as well as rocks tumbling filled the area.

Gradually, May and Brendan were approaching the entrance to the building in which the cable car was housed (they still had quite a ways to go before actually getting _in _to the cable car itself). Finally, Swampert slowed down before stopping completely in front of the door. Brendan and May hopped off him as they walked toward it. Before entering, however, they turned to see how their Pokémon were doing.

They were holding themselves off quite well.

Blaziken was alternating between fighting-type attacks and fire-type attacks against Regice, who was very resistant against them, despite his weakness.

Sceptile was hopping and dodging Regirock's Rock Arm while retaliating with his razor-sharp leaves that she threw to it.

Skarmory was attacking both of them systematically. He would Steel Wing one of the two behemoths a couple of times, taking out considerable chunks of mass before flying to the other one and doing the same thing.

Despite three Pokémon with type advantages, Regirock and Regice were very resistant, and they always regained their lost mass by either borrowing some rocks from the mountain side or reforming the ice around their body respectively.

At one point, when Regice had fallen down on its hands from Blaziken's Low Kick, it had turned its head to see our teenage heroes proceeding toward the cable car. Not wasting a second, it quickly got back up and lifted its arms high into the air. Blaziken shot a continuous flamethrower at it as he hopped around it, but Regice ignored him. His arms were still lifted up. All around him, the area became excessively cold and frozen. A large perimeter on the ground around him became encased in ice (including the mountainside), and it managed to chill even Blaziken.

He was preparing to unleash a Blizzard.

Upon seeing it, Swampert did not waste any time. It immediately turned toward May and Brendan, shoved them into the open door and slammed it shut, separating the kids from their Pokémon.

"No!" Brendan yelled, as he immediately got back up and rushed to the door.

"Wait!" May pleaded as she pulled his arm back.

Brendan immediately complied, knowing that there was nothing more that he could do, even though his gut was pleading with him to open that door. So the two of them stood there, in front of the door, not uttering a word. There were two glasses on the door (one on top, and one on the bottom, separated by a metal bar in the middle), permitting them to see outside, and for a few seconds, they were able to see Swampert start running toward Regice. Then… it hit. They flinched.

A sound that was akin to sharp needles flying in the air could be heard outside and immediately, both windows were instantly covered in a very thick sheet of frost. The entire door froze before their very eyes as it cracked, and it even spread a bit to the walls, ceiling and floor around it. For about 30 seconds they heard the horrible screech of the blizzard outside, imagining what kind of horrors were befalling their friends, their fathers and soon would be befalling themselves. Subsequently, it ended.

Both were silent. They had nothing to say, but plenty to contemplate. Total silence filled that room for several minutes. Neither of them said anything, but after a few seconds, Brendan slowly started walking toward the door. Upon reaching it, he slowly put his hand on it, and tried wiping off some frost. The humidity from his hand wiped out a thin sheet of water, but the frost on the outside was thick enough to keep him from seeing anything. The cold stung his hand.

"Brendan," May said quietly, breaking the silence. "I know you're concerned and I am too, but we can't waste any time."

"So we can't wait here." Brendan replied, still gazing at the frozen window.

"No, we can't. That's why I think we should use the cable car."

"What?" he asked, incredulously, yet in a deadpan tone. This time, he turned around.

"Note that I said 'use'. I have an interesting idea. We can activate the cable car and let it go up the mountain. It'll act as a decoy and give us time to escape through the back here while those two freaks are going to attack it."

Brendan did indeed think that May's idea was ingenious, but he had a slight problem with it. "How are we going to get out of here? There are no other doors."

"We'll make one. It shouldn't be too hard, what with your Aggron and my Hitmontop."

"And how are we going to activate the cable car?"

"Stop being so negative." May replied, with a smile on her face. "It shouldn't be too hard, just pull a few switches and press a few buttons. Come on."

"That's weird. Usually, I'm the reckless one."

"It's not recklessness, it's doing what we can with what we have. Now, come on."

Brendan took one last look at the door before running up to May and going toward the cable car. It was at this point that he thought about calling his father to see if everything was ok. He put his hand on the side of his bag, where he usually kept his Pokénav and to his surprise, he felt nothing. Looking at it, he could see that it was gone. Frantically, he started feeling every pocket on his clothes for it.

"My Pokénav…" He said. "It's not… Oh! It must've fell when Regirock hit me! Aaarggh! That stupid idiot!" He said angrily, smashing his fist against the wall.

"Calm down, Brendan." May said. "I still have mine, I'll call."

As she took out her yellow device, she dialled Professor Birch's number and held it up to her ear, waiting for an answer.

"May?" the professor instantly replied. "Are you and Brendan alright? What happened?"

"We're fine." she answered. "We managed to get into the cable car building before the huge Blizzard."

"Oh! thank goodness."

"What happened to you?"

"We were outside of the Blizzard's radius, but saw a piece of it from afar. Of course, most of the view was blocked by part of the mountainside, but it did look to be quite a terrible attack."

"Where are you now?"

"We're taking the long route toward the cable car, we'll be there soon. Don't go anywhere!"

"What are we going to do once you get here? And how are you getting inside here? The door is frozen shut."

"We'll call you when we do and then you could just get out by the roof."

"But Regice and Regirock are still outside aren't they?"

"Don't worry, we're not visible to them from where we are."

"Alright...in how much time did you say you were coming?"

"I didn't. It would be in 10 minutes."

"10 minutes?"

"It's a _long_, route. Sorry about that."

"It's ok. We actually had the idea of activating the cable car and making it go up the mountain to serve as a decoy. That should take some time."

"That's a wonderful idea May!"

"Thanks. So we'll see you in a short while."

"That, we will. Goodbye."

"Bye."

After May had filled Brendan in on the conversation, they proceeded toward the car. The entire thing was housed within this building. May and Brendan could, of course, see it from where they were. A very wide, orange, rectangular box, with a couple of sets of windows on both sides, two large windows on the square sides, and a door in the middle. There was no ceiling on the roof above it, so as to give it room to pass through the building whenever it was in use. The door of the car was on May and Brendan's level, however there was a small and narrow pathway separated by a turnstile. Normally there was an attendant that let people pass through when they showed their ticket, but there was evidently none at this time of night, so Brendan had to jump over it.

"I feel like a looter." he said to May, who was at the console. Next to the turnstile pathway was a fairly large console to start the car. It had a few buttons and one lever, and May was currently searching for a way to turn it on.

"Don't worry about it." she replied, still studying the console. "They'll understand. Now, how do you suppose I can turn this on? There must be a password, or something."

"Well, the door is tightly shut." he said, as he pulled it hard. "I guess you'd need to activate the console to get it open, right?"

"We don't need to open the door."

"Oh, right." Brendan replied. After a few seconds of thought, he immediately remembered something crucial. "Hey! we need a ticket to get through here."

"Yeah, that's kind of what we're trying to avoid." May replied dryly.

"No, I mean we literally need a ticket to open the door. The attendant always takes your ticket and scans on the infrared on the machine. That's what opens the door, and it just so happens that I have a fresh ticket that hasn't been used yet." he said gleefully.

"That's great but…how do you expect to turn the machine on to scan it?"

"Maybe it has something to do with that circuit breaker over there." Brendan replied, as he pointed to a silver box mounted on the wall at the far end of the building.

"Brendan, that's it! You're a genius." She rushed over to the box and tried to open it. "It's locked!" She exclaimed.

"Stand aside." Brendan said, as he took out a poké ball. "Vigoroth! Get out here!" Upon saying that the sloth Pokémon leaped out of his pokéball and hopped in one place constantly, pumping up his blood and chanting "Vigo! Vigo! Vigo!"

"We need you to rip the lid of that box out for us, please."

"What?" May said, in a worried tone "Wait, don't do that!" But it was too late, for Vigoroth had already hopped up to the box and snuck his long nails directly behind the lid. With one swift pull, he ripped it off, and several screws came flying off. The breakers were now all visible. There were a lot of them. An estimated thirty could be seen at first glance, but the exact number was unsure to both of them.

"You shouldn't have done that." May said. "We want to do as little damage as possible."

"We're going to use the cable car as a decoy aren't we?" Brendan replied, as he withdrew Vigoroth. "You don't think that it's going to be more than a little beat up when they're done with it?"

"Oh, yeah… I guess you're right. Well, it's not like we have a choice anyway."

"Right. Now, let's figure out which one of these breakers is the right one. There are so many of them. Oh! look, they're labelled. Lights, lights, lights, water heater, lights."

"Maybe it's on this side. Hmm… heater, lights, suspension, motor. I think this side is for the cable car."

"Well, then turn them all on."

May proceeded to do so, and after a few flicks with no results, a final flick of the switch turned the console on. "There!" May said, as they both ran toward it. "Give me your ticket, Brendan." The teenage boy promptly opened his bag, fetched his ticket and gave it to his friend. "Why is it that you have an extra ticket lying around anyway?" she asked. "I always keep one on me in case I need it. Saves me the trouble of waiting in line at the booth to buy one."

May scanned the ticket onto the infrared scanner and, after a few beeps and whistles, the cable car turned on. The lights turned themselves on inside and outside of it, and the door opened automatically.

"Great!" she said. "Now, how do we get it to go up."

"Someone has to at least be inside and then we have to both press a button at the same time."

"Which button?"

"That one." he replied, pointing to a large blue one on the console. "Haven't you done this before?"

"Only once. It made me nauseous so I decided to stick to flying."

"Right… well, let me go in." Brendan offered, as he hopped over the turnstile.

"Tell me when you're ready."

Opening the door a little wider, Brendan entered the cable car. The inside was fairly huge. It was about the size of a large room, and all around the walls was one long padded bench, that connected with itself. Since they turned a few breakers on, all the lights in the car were turned on, and although he had a few things on his mind, Brendan found it to be noticeably cozy.

Next to the door from which he entered, there was a small console with three buttons. One of which was beneath glass. Once he saw the blue one he yelled out "Ready!" and put his finger on it.

"Get ready to jump off!" May yelled, from the outside.

"I will, just get ready to press it!"

"Ok, here goes… 1... 2... 3... go!"

And the buttons were pressed. Brendan and May waited a few seconds but absolutely nothing happened. "Brendan!" May cried out. "Did you press the right button?"

"Yes!" Brendan replied. "Of course I did!… I think. It's the blue one right?"

May sighed as she hopped over the turnstile and entered into the car where she promptly pushed Brendan aside to look at the console. "It's this one here, right?" Asked Brendan, pointing to the blue button. "Yes," She replied. "Did you pres-"

At that moment, very suddenly, the cable car made a loud whirring noise and immediately started moving. The sudden shift in motion caused May and Brendan to fall down and the door to close itself. The car was turned on and was quickly moving upward toward the mountain.

"I knew I had the right one." Brendan said.

"Oh no…" May worriedly said. "What's happening?"

"What do you think is happening?" Brendan asked, as he rushed to the door. He pulled firmly several times on the door but it refused to open. "It's locked." he said. "Of course it's locked." replied May. "It's made to lock as soon as the cable car starts moving. Hit the emergency stop button."

Brendan didn't heed her orders, he was too busy looking outside the window of the door. There, he saw the result of the blizzard. Regirock and Regice were still there, and everything around them, the road, the mountainside, and even the area beyond the cliff (where the building housing the cable car was) were covered in thick a sheet of snow and ice. Plenty of icicles could be seen hanging from parts of mountain rocks and there was not even one blotch of orange to be seen anywhere. The snow was deep enough to cover the two golem's feet a few meters high.

However, it wasn't the sheer whiteness and shine that had Brendan's green orbs fixed outside. It was the golems. Both were immobile, and both were staring directly at him.

"Press it!" May screamed, almost hysterically.

"I can't!" he replied. "They're right there."

"Who?"

"The Regis! They see us, and I'm sure they'll attack at any moment!"

"In that case, you just hit the stop button and we'll jump off with Skarmory!" she yelled, as she proceeded toward the console. The tension between them was getting higher as the anxiety was getting to them.

As May was about to open the glass case on the console, she was suddenly startled by Brendan yelling "WATCH OUT!" The boy threw himself on her as she shrieked and both fell down. Following that moment, a large object hit the car, denting the metallic exterior producing a terrible noise and making the box shake violently. All the lights inside and outside the box turned off. The teenagers yelled frantically as they lied down, waiting for everything around them to stop rocking.

As the rocking slowly stopped, they became gradually more calm. Everything was completely black inside, and the only light came from the stars outside coming in through the window.

Brendan was about to get up at one point until he was stopped by May. "Don't move!" She whispered. They waited for a few minutes, their hearts burning inside their bodies, thinking that any following second could be the one where the suspension cable lets go. Eventually, their nerves eased up.

"This is ridiculous." Brendan said, after a few minutes of silence.

"It's better to lie down like this." May replied. "We don't want to-"

"I don't mean that!" he interrupted in a vicious tone. "This entire situation! We're fearing for our lives because some freak wants to steal my Pokémon."

"Brendan, I understand how you feel, really I do, but we can't really do anything about it now. Once we get out of this jam, we'll regroup and then-"

"Then what?" he interrupted yet again. "We make another plan that forces us into another corner?"

"There's nothing else we can do, Brendan. Did you see those things? We barely got out of Regirock's hands with three Pokémon on our side."

"And now a third one is adding itself. How do you expect we deal with that?"

"We take it step by step. As soon as we figure out where Deoxys is coming from and why he's pursuing us so fervently, it'll make things a lot easier."

"You know what else would make this a lot easier?" Brendan's voice rose to a frightening pitch as he spoke the following words. "If that coward would actually come over here and take what he wants!"

"Brendan!" May spoke with authority. Although she was scared, she wasn't frightened enough to let Brendan make any reckless moves.

The furious boy angrily got up and stomped up to one of the large windows of the car, where he saw both golems, still in the same area, having only moved a little bit.

"Brendan! get away from there!"

"You want this!" he yelled at them, showing them his yellow poké ball. "Come up from there and take it!"

"Brendan! Get away from there right NOW!"

As those words furiously spewed out of May's throat, another loud noise startled them both again. Another loud noise, and another violent shake. This time, the shake wasn't from the force of a blunt object. It was the car that dropped down and stopped immediately after. Needless to say, the two shrieked and Brendan fell down as he could not hold his balance. He dropped his poké ball, and it rolled all the way to the other end of the box.

The car had stabilized itself but both were as nervous as ever. May was in a sitting position on the ground and Brendan was lying on his stomach.

"What was that?" May asked. Her pitch had lessened considerably, and she said those words almost in a whisper.

"The support is probably giving off." Brendan replied, in an emotionless voice. "They want us dead."

"They know that we can get out of this." she said. "They don't want us dead, they want us stabilized."

A loud, horrible, metallic creaking sound could be heard above them. May blocked her ears and closed her eyes shut, and Brendan stayed down, completely motionless. After a few seconds of silence, a loud metallic *SNAP* was heard, and the cable car jotted down another level, before stabilizing itself, amidst the teenagers' nervous yelps. At this point, Brendan was enticed to sit back up, and now both of them were clinging tightly to a part of something. May dug her fingernails into the seat cushions, and Brendan gripped tightly onto a part of the piping. None of them uttered a word for more than ten minutes as the car rocked slowly and silently in the pitch black of night.

Suddenly, another sound rung in their eardrums and almost made their hearts leap out of their throats; no one shrieked, though. It was a ring.

"It's my Pokénav." May said, her voice trembling as she was incredibly anxious.

"Don't answer it" Brendan said in a deadpan tone. He was facing the wall of the cable car and didn't even turn it to look it her.

"It's probably… D-Deoxys." she said.

"What?"

"Deoxys!" May shrieked, as she pointed to the window, her finger shaking. Brendan turned his head and saw, to his horror, the red face of the alien, peering at them with its wide, immobile eyes. It was there. It had found them

Only it's upper body could be seen through the window, and one arm was raised upward, as it was hanging on to a railing from the top of the cable car. It was immobile, not even blinking. During this time, unbeknownst to the kids, the cable car had stopped moving completely.

May and Brendan were terrified, and none uttered a word for several moments. "May…" Brendan said quietly, still keeping his eyes fixed on the alien. "Go to the back and get the poké ball, and slowly… very slowly, give it to me."

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea." May responded, in a frightened tone. "He might see us and-"

"Wait!" Brendan whispered. He noticed something about Deoxys as she was talking. His face was still motionless, but it was growing brighter and brighter, and a light aura filled its eyes. A loud, powerful sound of energy filled their ears. Deoxys was charging up.

"Watch out!" were the only words that came out of Brendan's mouth before the release of energy. Deoxys had unleashed a powerful Psychic that broke through the window and proceeded all the way to the end of the car, at the other window, shattering it as well.

Our heroes had quickly and instinctively thrown themselves down and covered their heads and faces. Thousands of tiny pieces of glass covered the floor of the car, as well as themselves. None were big enough to have penetrated them, though.

Slowly, Brendan and May lifted their heads up to see what was going on again. As they did, several shards of glass slipped off of their heads and arms and onto the floor.

Deoxys was still hanging from the railing with one arm, staring at them. It moved itself forward and backward, giving itself momentum, and with one swift move, jumped into the car, through the window, performing a frontward flip and landing directly in front of Brendan.

Seeing this red alien creature towering over him instilled a lot of anxiety in him. Out of instinct, the teenage boy got up and backed away a bit, being careful not to place his hands on the floor. The shards of glass cracked as he stepped on them.

"I know what you want…" Brendan said to it, his lips quivering as he spoke. He did his best to keep his cool but he was scared out of his wits. As he said this, he subtly put his hand behind his back and opened up his palm, signalling at May to give him Groudon. May was a bit hesitant at first, peering at Deoxys in front every so often, who was as still as a statue. Eventually, she placed the minimized yellow orb into his palm, and Brendan attached it to his belt in the back. He continued speaking: "… and I don't have it."

With a swift, sudden motion, Deoxys grabbed Brendan by the throat and lifted him up. May shrieked. Brendan had trouble breathing, as he laid his hands on the cold, malleable arm of the alien. For the first few seconds, he saw in what was usually its cold, lifeless eyes what seemed to be a burning fury. For that moment, its pupils had come alive and Deoxys looked like a veritable threat. Brendan knew that to avoid any trouble at all there was only one thing he could do.

He closed his eyes. He shut them as tight as he possibly could. All he could see now was black and now he was incredibly nervous. He had no idea what Deoxys could do to him at any moment, but he did know that he had to keep his eyes tightly shut at all costs.

Angry, Deoxys turned around and violently hit Brendan against the wall. For a half-second, Brendan opened his eyes as he let out a painful cry, and Deoxys peered in for that half-second, which is all that it needed. The memories came gushing in.

May gathered her courage and ran up to the alien. Her heart was burning, but she couldn't let it bully her friend like that. "Let him GO!" she yelled, with as much intimidation as she could in her trembling voice as she grabbed the extraterrestrial arm and shook it as hard as she could.

"May!" Brendan uttered with a raspy voice, his eyes still closed. "Don't!"

At first, Deoxys thought nothing of her (she grabbed its arm during the entire time that it scanned Brendan's mind), but after a while, it took a step back and slapped her hand away from it, dropping Brendan who slid down on the floor.

Deoxys fixed its gaze upon May as she started backing away in fear. After regaining her courage, she slipped her arm on her belt and grabbed and enlarged a poké ball. Deoxys seemed somewhat threatened. He had his knees slightly bent and kept one of his legs back.

Suddenly, both May and Deoxys heard a sound coming from the back. The sound of a Pokémon coming out of its poké ball. Deoxys turned around and saw, in front of Brendan, an angry Vigoroth, hopping up and down and flailing it's arms and saying periodically "Vigo! Vigo! Vigo!" The alien did nothing but hold still.

In a sudden move, Vigoroth leapt toward him and thrust one of his arms frontward, toward its face. Deoxys calmly and quickly moved away its head. Vigoroth retaliated with another arm thrust and Deoxys ducked. Finally, Vigoroth ended with a pivoted kick, which Deoxys not only avoided, but grabbed. With little force, it swung Vigoroth onto the wall, where the sloth-Pokémon hit and slid down, much like his trainer did seconds earlier.

Another 'Pokémon-emerging-from-its-poke-ball-noise' was heard. Deoxys turned back and saw an Ampharos in front of its trainer, with an angry look on her face. "Thunderbolt!" the trainer cried. Ampharos heeded the orders and shot an electric charge toward the alien. Deoxys, a split-second on time, ducked and evaded. Brendan had clung to the side of the wall so the charge flew out the window. "Vigoroth!" he yelled. "Try again!"

Having little time of recovering from it's close encounter with the thunderbolt, Deoxys turned to see Vigoroth leaping toward it. Again, it managed to avoid him by ducking. This time, Vigoroth landed back on his feet and instantly pushed himself away as soon as he landed, propelling himself back toward Deoxys and landing a well-placed kick on its face.

As it covered its visage, it glanced at Ampharos and saw a split-second too late, another Thunderbolt. This time, it hit it. It wasn't thrown aback though, as it forced itself to stay put and absorbed the recoil damage itself. It had knelt down, and several electric currents were running through it until they dissipated. From behind, Vigoroth had tried striking it, but without even looking back, it elbowed him in the face.

Suddenly, it started running toward Ampharos. "Reflect!" May cried in hopes of perhaps defending whatever attack it might have chosen to do. "Ampha…" said the electric Pokémon, starting to create a yellow barrier around herself. As Deoxys got closer, it suddenly jumped. It jumped frontward and, face to face with the yellow biped (literally centimeters apart) expelled a powerful Psychic blast, pushing Ampharos away and having her roll all the way to the end of the car. Deoxys landed perfectly on its feet.

"Ampharos!" May cried, as she ran to her electric Pokémon, who was laying face-down on the ground, tending to him.

Deoxys stood still in front of them, regaining part of its strength. It stayed a little too long though, for at that moment, Vigoroth leapt onto it and clung tightly to it, digging his claws deep into the alien's malleable skin.

Deoxys was furious. It waddled around the car frantically, trying to get the overgrown sloth off its back. It hit its back against the walls a few times, but Vigoroth kept a tight hold. Then, it grabbed one of his arms, turned around abruptly and threw him against the wall again. Vigoroth was up seconds after, still in top shape, and performed a series of quick punches and kicks, Deoxys blocked and dodged nearly all of them with ease, but left himself open a few times.

"Ampaharos." May whispered into Ampharos' ear. "When you get a clear shot, I want you to use another thunderbolt on Deoxys. With as much power as you can muster up. But don't overexert yourself. "Ampharos." The furless sheep nodded in agreement, and started to charge up. The red orb on her tail began to glow, and electric currents ran from there to the front of her, into a large electric orb that she was charging up in her hands

Meanwhile, Deoxys was retaliating with a few punches and kicks of its own to Vigoroth, and while he wasn't really a fighter, they were quite powerful ones. At one point, it managed to grab Vigoroth by one of the legs, and throw him a few feet away, near Brendan. "Don't fret, buddy." he said to him, as he knelt down. "Just try grabbing him with a seismic toss and throw him out the window. It could give us time to leave here. Just try to be cool about it though. You know, don't go too crazy like you usually do."

Vigoroth heeded his trainers orders, however it couldn't contain its excitement. It's heart was beating excessively fast and the adrenaline was pumping everywhere in his body.

"Now, Ampharos!" May cried out. "Ampha!" The Pokémon replied and released the powerful electric charges that flew out of the yellow orb.

Vigoroth, in one motion, jumped high into the air, onto Deoxys. Unfortunately, the alien had already anticipated its attack, and fell quickly down onto its back, with its legs high in the air.

As Vigoroth fell down, Deoxys assured that he did so onto its legs, and with all of its force, it flipped backward and threw the sloth into the opposite direction, plain into the powerful thunderbolt that Ampharos had shot out. The charges hit him head-on and electrocuted him badly. He hit the ground a few times as he was sent hurtling down the room where Ampharos laid. Both of them had finished battling.

Deoxys had had enough. It quickly got back up and walked toward Brendan. "Now…Now wait a minute." Brendan said, as he withdrew Vigoroth. "Let's be sane about this, you can't possibly w-"

Deoxys grabbed Brendan by the throat again, and this time dragged him to the edge of the window.

"Brendan!" May shrieked, as she ran toward him. She was too late, for as she approached them, Deoxys stepped up onto the edge of the window and in one motion, threw Brendan upward into the air before grabbing onto the railing and lifting itself up onto the roof. "No!" She cried out in despair.

* * *

It was cold outside, very cold. Other things were on Brendan's mind as he sailed upward in the air. The night was black and the stars were scattered in the sky. He screamed loudly. He wasn't sure if he'd fall on the roof or into the cliffs below. As gravity kicked in, his body turned and he saw the hard orange roof of the cable car. He put his arms up, covering his face, and fell down with a bang (He hadn't fallen from very high so it didn't hurt that much). The cold metal stung his skin. Slowly, he lifted up his head, and saw the metallic extension that held the cable car to the cable encased in an enormous block of ice. "Wha?" he said to himself, perplexed.

_Boom!_

The noise startled him and he immediately turned around. Deoxys had landed. Slowly, it started walking toward him, and he knew that it was inevitable. Deoxys had scanned him. He knew he had Groudon with him at that very moment. Right there on his belt.

Still on his bottom, Brendan frantically moved away on his hands and feet. "Wait." he said, nervously. Despite him knowing that there was nothing more he could do, the thought of a big alien bully taking his Pokémon from him without anymore of a fight would be a big blow to his pride. "Stop, I said! You're not walking away from here with _MY_ Pokémon, do you hear? You'll have to pry it from my dead…" Brendan couldn't finish his sentence. His voice was shaking and he practically lost all motivation to continue.

Once Deoxys was close enough, it simply knelt down and peered into Brendan's eyes, two centimeters away from his face. Brendan's mouth quivered in front of him, but still, with a very faint voice he continued. "…hands." He shut his eyes in fear.

Suddenly, Deoxys' face was struck with a large furry appendage and rolled away. Blaziken had come from the side of the cable car. After the kick, he landed back on his feet, directly in front of Brendan, he had jumped from the cliffs onto the railing. "Blaziken!" Brendan exclaimed with euphoria. "Man, I owe you one, buddy."

"Blaze!" he replied. "Blaze, Blaze, Blaze, Blaziken, Blaze!" He motioned to the boy to go further away. "R-Right." Brendan replied, and quickly got up and moved away to the end of the car, but not too close to the edge.

Upon seeing this, Deoxys did not let it pass. It quickly got up and ran toward Brendan but Blaziken put himself in front of it. Deoxys lifted up its arms toward its own face and threw them back, unleashing a powerful Psychic blast from its visage. Blaziken quickly put his arms in front of his face, and absorbed as much of the attack is he could. After he regained his senses, he positioned himself in his fighting position and lit his wrist flames.

Deoxys unleashed another Psychic blast, but Blaziken dodged it by performing a sideway flip and followed up with a kick to the face. Deoxys quickly regained its senses afterward and jumped up, twirling around itself and kicking Blaziken in the face, who retaliated by blocking with one of his burning fists. Once it fell back down, the alien ducked and swooped Blaziken's legs with its own, Blaziken avoided by hopping up, and in the air he shot a large flamethrower from his mouth Deoxys hopped to the side to avoid it, and unleashed another Psychic. Blaziken was hurled backward into the air and as he fell down managed barley to grab onto the railing with one hand and quickly lifted himself up onto the car. Still on his knees, Deoxys thrust its leg toward him, to which Blaziken dodged and followed up with another flamethrower. This time, it connected, and Deoxys flew away a few feet back before landing back on its feet.

For a few seconds, Deoxys turned its head and glanced and Brendan. As it turned its head back and saw Blaziken in the process of getting back up, it decided to use this opportunity to its advantage and ran toward Brendan.

"Oh boy." Brendan said to himself, as he got up. He decided to take out one poké ball and enlarge it just in case. "Don't come any closer!" He said, but Deoxys did not listen.

Suddenly, it felt a large weight on its ankle and tripped, falling directly in front of Brendan, startling him. Blaziken had taken hold of him and, turning around, threw him to the other edge of the roof. Blaziken ran back toward him and the two engaged in a series of punches, kicks dodges and blocks.

As Brendan kept low, he looked upon the impressive fisticuffs display and he noticed how Deoxys, itself an alien of the Psychic type, had quite a bit of know-how in hand-to-hand combat.

However, in the corner of his eye, he noticed something in the distance that distracted him from the fight. From where he was, he had an exquisite view of the tip of Mount Chimney. It was actually very close to where he was, maybe one or two kilometres in length. It was dark now, and the entire mountain was covered in a dim shadow. He spotted what he could only imagine to be a Pokémon at the mouth of that volcano. It was close, but the darkness was too much of a nuisance to make out what it was. All he could see was that the beast was a quadruped and had large fur that flowed in the wind. It stood very still, and only the fur on its back was moving.

"W-What is that?" Brendan asked as he took out his pokédex. The scanner wasn't close enough though, and he could only capture a silhouette of it. The Pokémon still did not move, it only stayed put at the tip of the Mount Chimney Volcano.

Suddenly, Blaziken fell down right in front of him. Brendan let out a small yell as he was startled. His distraction was over, and he turned his head back to see Deoxys charging up for another Psychic. Without wasting any time, Blaziken lifted himself back up and went in front of Brendan. He put his arms around him and protected him completely from the blast. Brendan could feel the force pushing against Blaziken, but he was fine for the time being. "This can't go on for long." he said to himself.

* * *

During this time, May had no choice but to stay in the cable car. Not long after Brendan and Deoxys had left, her Pokénav rang again. "Oh, I had completely neglected that." She said to herself, before answering it.

"May?" asked Norman.

"Yeah."

"What happened? We tried calling you twice, not counting this time."

"Sorry, I-I didn't really notice. We had a close encounter with you-know-who."

"Is everyone all right?"

"Yes, dad. I assume you got a good view of what happened?"

"You bet we did! We were horrified. That car could've let go at any moment. We were finally relieved when we saw Regice Ice Beam-ing the suspension cord."

"Ice Beam-ing…? Oh… so that's why we stopped moving."

"Where are you now?"

"I'm in the cable car right now, but Brendan's out on the roof with Deoxys. I've heard sounds and thumps since before, but I haven't heard anything from Brendan. I don't know what's going on."

"Don't worry about him, your Blaziken is taking care of… oh… oh man."

"What? What is it?"

"Deoxys has them in a corner. They're on the edge of the roof!"

"What? Where's Skarmory? Tell him to come over here right now!"

"Right, you stay there. As soon as you get back down find a way to meet up with us."

"Sure…"

May hung up and ran to one of the windows. She saw Skarmory coming directly toward the car and behind him, Regirock and Regice. Regirock wasn't doing anything, but Regice was shooting occasional shots of Ice Beam. The metallic bird evaded them and one of them hit the precise window that May was staring through, encasing it in a thick sheet of ice. She jumped.

"Well, forget that…" She said to herself. She went out to one edge of the window (where Deoxys had broken it), hoping to catch a better glimpse of her Pokémon. However, her eye caught something big. Directly below her, standing on the edge of one of the cliffs, staring at the cable car, was a large, metallic behemoth with black arms and three red fingers.

It was, of course, Registeel.

It was immobile, not moving an inch, only staring at what was going on up on the car. "There _he _is," May said to herself. "but where's the police?" Then, in the corner of her eye, she saw Skarmory approaching as an Ice Beam passed directly above it.

"Skarmory! Watch out for Brendan and Blaziken!" She yelled to it, pointing at the two right above her.

* * *

Blaziken was doing his best to absorb the shock from all the Psychic blasts that Deoxys was throwing at him, and he was getting weaker by the moment. Brendan could feel the pressure, but not the pain, and he was getting worried.

"H-Hey, Blaze…how are you holding up?"

"B-Blaze…" The fire chicken responded in a weak voice.

"We're kind of close to the edge here… A-Are you sure you're going to hold out? Don't push it."

Blaziken took a while to respond, but eventually he uttered another weak confirmation.

It was here that Deoxys, sick of waiting, shot one final Psychic blast, an excessively powerful one, and right after doing so, it began to run toward them.

The hit connected, and Blaziken lost his footing. Both boy and Pokémon were thrown off of the car, into the abyss.

But a sparkle of silver shone in Brendan's eyes as he fell. A silver sparkle of hope. He felt a smooth, cold, metallic sheet press against his body, and clung on for dear life. Then, he felt the wind stream across his face, the cold wind.

Blaziken had grabbed onto a part of the railing and swung himself into the car, where a very jovial May was there to greet him. As soon as he landed, he lost his footing and fell on his knees. "Blaziken!" May exclaimed, with worry in her voice. "Are you alright?"

"B…Blazi…ken." The Pokémon uttered faintly.

"You have to get back in your poké ball." She said, as she took his out and handed it to him. "Come on." Blaziken rejected her offer and hit the ball out of her hand, saying "Blaze!"

May looked at the red orb rolling on the floor, and back to her Pokémon. She saw now that he was in pain. From the number of times Blaziken had been struck by Psychic attacks, she eventually learned the signs, and could plainly see that he was badly damaged. More pain than she had ever seen him. Tears began to fill her eyes.

"Blaziken, you have to get back in." She pleaded. "You've done your part, now let us do ours. Please…"

Blaziken shook his head stubbornly.

"You don't need to prove anything to me by doing this, Blaziken. You've done already more than I could ask for, now please just get back in the ball, I won't have it any other way."

She grabbed the ball once more and handed to him. "Get in! Please!" She said. A few of her tears dropped onto it and slid down as she waited for a response. She got one:

"Blaze! Blaze, Blaze, Blazi, Blaziken, Blaze. Blaze, Blaze, _Blaze_, Ken, Blaze, Blaziken, Blaziken, Ken, Blaze!" And with another motion, he threw away her pokéball.

What was said, to this day, remains known only between May and Blaziken. Whatever it was that _was _said, was enough to make May understand the true bond of friendship that she had with her Pokémon. She always knew Blaziken to be stubborn, and he always had her worried more often than not, but now she realized that in this particular moment, his stubbornness was the best attitude for which she could have asked.

In that moment, all of their past memories of came flooding in her mind. She remembered how happy he was, as a little Torchic to see her, and how happy she was to receive him. She recalled his stubborn attitude and the way he would scuttle about quickly to catch up with her whenever she ran, and she reminisced about all the times they spent together, from Torchic to Blaziken and felt as if she was there. She was home.

"O-Ok." She said to him, wiping the tears from her eyes.

Her reminiscence was short lived though, as at that moment, an enormous explosion was heard directly above them. May shrieked as she grabbed hold of Blaziken. The car shook tremendously and the previous loud, metallic ripping noise was heard once again, and both felt clearly that the car was going to drop. Without wasting any time, Blaziken grabbed May, threw her on his shoulder and leapt straight out the window. As they exited, and plummeted down, May cried out for her friend: "BRENDAAAN!"

* * *

During this time, Brendan was soaring in the sky with Skarmory, evading the several Ice Beams that were headed toward them. With every beam passing, Brendan's heart jumped. "Careful there, Skarmory." he said, looking around everywhere. "We don't want to turn into solid blocks of ice, now do we?"

As Skarmory swooped around , evading another Ice Beam, it neared the roof where it was about to land. As it approached, it was finally hit by a stray beam. It's entire body stiffened and turned into a light-ish blue colour. Brendan was unaffected, but was stuck. One of his legs was caught between Skarmory's open wings. "Spoke to soon…" he said to himself.

The two were falling onto the roof, and soon, Brendan managed to free himself and the two fell directly back onto the metal sheet. Skarmory fell bluntly, still in its frozen position and made a small dent on the roof, and Brendan fell on his back. He didn't fall from very high, but it still stung. "Oh… this isn't fun." he groaned.

It was too early to relax though, Deoxys leapt over the frozen Skarmory and ran toward our teenage hero. Before the boy could even react, Deoxys stopped in its tracks and its torso turned violently. It had been struck.

As it turned back, Brendan saw four leaves encrusted into its skin, all over its torso. He quickly turned around and saw Sceptile in back of him, in his battle pose. He was shivering. "Sceptile!" he exclaimed emphatically… I guess the cold got to you more than anyone else, huh?"

Sceptile didn't respond. As soon as Brendan had said that, she leapt directly over him, and onto Deoxys, who was about to pounce on the boy. The two rolled away quite a ways before stopping, still grabbed onto each other. Deoxys was on the bottom and Sceptile was over it. The alien produced a Psychic blast that sent the reptile hurtling into the air. She regained her senses in mid-air and started slowly gliding down. As she did so, she performed a mid-air flip and unleashed several more leaves from her tail. Deoxys jumped backward and evaded them as they hit the roof and got stuck there.

Deoxys jumped up as well, to meet up with Sceptile, and performed a very powerful kick to her face. The lizard managed to block, but the shock of the blow hurt her arm greatly, and Deoxys took that to its advantage. As she twirled around to hit it with her bushy tail, it managed to grab it, and throw her down, to the other end of the roof (the opposite of where Brendan was). Instead of falling down hard, Sceptile managed to glide down seconds before she touched the ground, landing lightly on her feet.

Brendan had gone over to Skarmory on all fours. "Come on, Skarmory. Get back up." he was cold to the touch, and completely stiff, not even his eyes were moving. "Man, you really need an Ice Heal, or something to thaw you out…" he looked around nervously for a second. "Where did Blaziken go?…"

Sceptile was now holding Deoxys by the throat, over the edge of the roof. Several fines were crawling out of her arm and entangling Deoxys around its neck. It had its arms on them, trying desperately to tear them off, but they were tightly twined.

Then, in an instant, clear out of the blue, the metallic suspension exploded. Or rather, an explosion occurred on the frozen metallic suspension. A humongous orange blast could be seen, accompanied by a monstrous sound. Several large chunks of ice broke off and fell on the roof of the car as well as in the abyss below. Brendan yelped and covered his head. Luckily, none fell on him, but plenty fell around him. He did feel several smaller pieces of ice fall on top of him.

The suspension cable was free though, and was now back to hanging by a thread. The entire car descended slowly as the metal groaned loudly. "Oh, no…" Brendan whispered in a gasp. "Well, any port in a storm." he said, before taking out a spare poké ball and tapping Skarmory with it, de-materializing him as he was withdrawn into the orb.

The explosion was enough to distract Sceptile, and she turned her head to see the gigantic blast. She peered for too long though, for as she turned back, she saw Deoxys' red and blue fist seconds before it punched her square in the face. Sceptile took a few steps back and instantly retracted its vines. Deoxys plummeted downward but managed to grab hold of the railing.

The grass Pokémon instantly ran toward Brendan as the car was letting go. Without stopping, she grabbed him by the waist and placed him under her arm, and upon reaching the edge, soared off, just as the suspension gave off and the car plummeted downward, into the cliffs.

As he leapt into the air, Brendan heard a familiar voice cry his name. He looked downward and saw, at the very same time, his friend and her Pokémon leaping out the window of the cable car. "MAAAY!" he cried out loudly.

It was, of course, not over.

Both kids were soaring through the air, feeling the wind rushing through them and the adrenaline pumping through their entire bodies. Thousands of things rushed through their minds, most notably how high they were. They were soaring down the side of the mountain and below them was a five kilometre drop. All they saw was black.

Brendan and Sceptile were floating slowly (although still pretty fast) down, but things were more complicated for May and Blaziken. As they fell, Blaziken hit the side of the mountain and skidded down it on its feet. Several rocks broke off and smoke protruded from the skids, but they were slowing down significantly. Every so often, when the descent became too ruff, the chicken would take it's feet off and freefall for a bit before setting them back down and skidding some more.

Behind them, to their horror, was the cable car. It fell at the same time as they did and followed them down the mountain. It hit one side first, producing a horrible sound of metal hitting rock, and turned itself around in the air again before falling back down on another part of the mountain. Brendan and Sceptile didn't have much to worry about, but May and Blaziken were directly in front of it, and any stumble would have had them swept by it. They heard the windows break and the metal dent, and it wasn't pleasant at all.

It continued doing this for the first few tumbles before simply starting to roll completely down the side of the mountain.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour (which was really two minutes), they saw solid ground. A forest was directly below them and they saw large trees spanning several kilometres ahead. The lizard and the boy floated gently down, near the foot of the mountain, and the chicken and the girl, a few meters before skidding down to the end, jumped off, several feet forward, and landed briskly right next to their friends.

As soon as both landed, the cable car fell one last time on the ground and produced one final blow. It fell upright on one of it's smaller sides, and after that last smash on the ground, everything seemed quiet.

It still wasn't over.

Deoxys hopped out of the window from the top part, and fell down. It had been hiding inside it the entire time. It fell out on the side where our friends were, and headed for them while emitting its cry. It echoed.

Brendan and May got ready to run, while Sceptile and Blaziken advanced in front of them. The two teenagers could hardly see anything in the blackness of night. Only an ominous black figure running toward them. but something stopped Deoxys in its tracks.

The cable car made another loud, creaking sound and started tilting downward. Before Deoxys could look up, the entire thing fell down horizontally and crushed him under it, producing a large puff of smoke around it. It had missed the Pokémon by about one meter.

Now, everything was quiet. The teenagers were immobile and dumb for a few seconds, processing what had happened. The worst part seemed over. They both turned their heads toward each other at the same time, slowly.

"Well," Brendan said. "so much for the decoy."

"We can't stop now!" May said, slightly frantically. "Deoxys is going to get out of there any moment now. We have to start running."

"What, are you kidding? He can't lift himself out of there."

As soon as he had said that, both were suddenly startled by a familiar cry, echoing above them. They looked up and saw, at the edge of the mountain from which they had recently descended, the shadow of Regirock, peering down at them.

"No," May continued. "but he can. Him and his friends. Come on!"

As May grabbed her friend and turned around to start running, the two noticed something they had neglected. Both their Pokémon were completely worn out. Blaziken was lying on his back sweating profusely, and Sceptile was on one knee, panting and still shivering. "Oh no," May said, in a worried tone. "We forgot about them."

"Return Sceptile." Brendan said. "Thanks for everything, you did great. Really great."

"You too, Blaziken." May said, as she smiled. Her fire type returned the smile before being withdrawn. "Now, come on, we've got to move quickly."

"Where does this road lead?" Brendan asked, as he started running.

"Who knows?" May said, as she ran faster. "We'll figure that out when it's safe again."

"I have a feeling it won't be for a long time…"

"You and me, both."

Our heroes proceeded to hide through the trees in the dark forest beyond them. It was very dark, and they had no idea where they were going, but anywhere was better than there. Anywhere.


End file.
